


The Liminal Children

by Zingiber



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fantasy, M/M, Romance, Violence, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zingiber/pseuds/Zingiber
Summary: Sherlock Holmes was seven years old when he was whisked away by the Fair Folk.





	1. Dream things true

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by a prompt on the Sherlock Kink Meme Tumblr: https://sherlockkinkmeme.tumblr.com/post/164351099545/prompt-228
> 
> (I'm sorry, Prompt Anon, but I don't know enough about Victorian times and conventions to confidently write ACD Holmes. I hope you can forgive me and hopefully enjoy this fic, and maybe a more knowledgable author will come along and fill the same prompt.)
> 
> Fair warning: this fic is not complete and I'm not sure how many chapters it will have. I'm hoping to keep it on the shorter side, but my idea is that it will be done when it's done. 
> 
> My version of Fairies/the Fair Folk/etc is loosely based on Skye Alexander's "Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore." However, I may bend the rules to work with the story. Please don't hold me accountable for discrepancies in fairy mythology. ^^;
> 
> The rating and tags are likely to change as the story progresses. 
> 
> Lastly, I have no Beta reader or editor. If you spot a typo or obvious Americanism, please let me know and I can fix it.

Sherlock Holmes was seven years old when he was whisked away by the Fair Folk.

In hindsight, he may have been careless.  With his pirate hat perched atop his head at a jaunty angle, a pair of wellies with cracked soles on his feet, and the June sun warm on his shoulders, he had left the safety of home with a heart full of adventure and a mind devoid of caution.

Sherlock had thought himself ready for any obstacle.  In his backpack, he carried a notebook, pens, a magnifying glass, and a sleeve of chocolate digestives.  Redbeard ambled along at his side, pausing every so often to investigate scents and lift a leg to mark clumps of sheep’s fescue.  All around, birds called and insects ticked and whirred in a chorus as steady and mechanical as clockwork.

Hunting for damselflies, Sherlock left his usual path to make for a cluster of trees on the other side of the field.  He suspected there was a pond at the center of the stand.  According to his book, damselfly nymphs favored aquatic habitats.  He set off toward the trees.

As Sherlock neared his destination, a fence loomed into view, almost concealed by the riot of common bent curling through its barbed wires.  Sherlock glanced at Redbeard, uncertain; but then he spotted a gap in the fence.  Probably it had been knocked down by a wayward cow, the edge of a tractor, and never repaired.  It was just large enough for boy and dog to squeeze through, though the sleeve of Sherlock’s jumper caught on one of the barbs as he wriggled free, ripping the fabric.  He studied the ragged hole, then dismissed it: unimportant.

If he had looked more closely, he might have noticed the sign posted several yards down on the fence.  The paint was faded, the words choked by tendrils of grass:

_KEEP OUT – FAE GROUNDS._

After, the farmer who owned the land would be fined a punishing sum for his neglect.  He would forever after keep the fence intact, the grass low-cut, the sign freshly-painted.  But that was all _after._

The trees were thick and the grass overgrown in the little wood, teeming with ticks and flies and mosquitos.  Sherlock didn’t care.  He tromped through the underbrush with Redbeard trailing behind him, entranced by the new sounds and scents crowding his canine senses.  Sherlock’s next step landed with a squelch and he felt water seep through the cracks in his soles to dampen his socks.  He grinned.

The trees broke away to form a clearing.  As Sherlock drew near, he glimpsed a spatter of sunlight on still water.  The fetid stink of pond scum filled the air.  The ticking and whirring of insects was louder here, almost frenzied.  Pushing aside blades of grass, he found himself at the edge of the pond.  He shrugged off his backpack with practiced ease, collected his notebook and pen, and slid it back on as he settled down to wait.

And _there_ :  darting across the surface of the pond, blurringly swift, flew the damselflies.  Hunting, probably – they were vicious predators.  Even the nymphs ate other insects.  Sherlock watched, entranced, pen poised above the blank page of his notebook.  Waiting for one to come close enough to sketch.

He thought it was a fish, at first.  A shape darted through the water, bone-white, skimming the surface with scarcely a ripple.  Sherlock glanced down and his eyes widened: not a fish.  A hand _._ A _human hand._

In that moment, every sound in the wood – every ticking, whirring insect, every calling bird – fell silent.

Sherlock had no time to react.  Before he understood what he was seeing, the hand slid quietly up out of the water.  The arm that followed was slender but soft, the wrist slim, fingers delicate – and so Sherlock was caught off-guard by the power in the clammy grip that encircled his wrist.  He opened his mouth to scream and the hand _pulled_.  Cold water broke over his head and he knew no more.

Silence reigned in the wood.  Then Redbeard began to bark.

-

When Sherlock woke, he found himself cradled in a woman’s arms.  Light, airy voices crooned as he blinked, muddled and confused.

“Oh, look!  The sweetling is awake.”

“Such a lovely little dear.”

“So precious.”

The woman holding Sherlock raised her voice above the rest, pride honeying her words.  “Do you see his eyes?  Look, they are like shards of silver.  See how finely he is made?”

Amidst the flurry of tittering laughter, one voice was sharp with reproach.  “The Queen prefers golden-haired children.”

The giggles and squeals died instantly.  Sherlock blinked, puzzled.  His vision was murky, the figures arrayed around him blurred into vivid splotches of color.  If he furrowed his brow and squinted, his sight would sharpen a fraction.  The effort made his head hurt.

“I never said he was for the Queen,” said the woman holding him.

“They all are,” answered the other voice – also female, but lower, subdued.  Sherlock squinted in the direction of that voice.  Amidst hazy shapes cast in cream and violet, ocre and tangerine, this one seemed plain in comparison:  pale, clad in moss green, her hair a smudge of fawnskin.  “The Queen said—”

“The Queen,” said the woman holding Sherlock, “is not the only one who lacks for a child.”

“You have no desire to be a mother,” said the other woman.

A noncommittal hum.  “Perhaps.”  Fingers plucked at Sherlock’s curls, tapped the end of his nose.  He looked up and met an unfamiliar gaze.  Even this close, he could only catch glimpses of her, impressions: sharp angles, skin like sun-bleached bones, her mouth a crimson slash.  Dark hair piled high atop her head.

“Hello, sweetling,” she said.  She regarded her retinue.  “Perhaps I am not fit for motherhood, but he amuses me.  I might yet find… uses for him.”

Something in her use of the pause set off another round of giggles, but a darker note permeated their bell-bright music.  The figure of fawnskin and moss green was silent, unmoving.

“He is only a child,” she said.

“A _human_ child,” said the first.  “Humans age quickly, do they not?  He will be grown in a blink and gone in another.  Best to enjoy him while I can.”

Another gale of laughter.  Sherlock squirmed in the woman’s arms, craning his neck, eyes sweeping his gauzy surroundings.  He could make out little beyond the vibrant cluster of figures; all appeared to be female, but he couldn’t be sure.

“You’re frightening him,” said the woman in moss green.  “Look, he’s shaking.”

It was only then that Sherlock realized he was shaking—he was afraid—terror raked shivers down his spine, cutting off his voice as effectively as talons rending his throat.  He wrapped his arms around himself and shook.  He was all but blind and surrounded by people he didn’t know, and _where was Redbeard?_  Where had his best friend gone?  Where was he?  Had anyone noticed he was gone?

“Oh, sweetling, I am sorry,” said the woman holding him.  She shifted him, brought her lips to his brow.  Sherlock shied away from that crimson slash, but she would not be deterred; her mouth pressed to the skin at his hairline once, firmly, and drew back.  Sherlock blinked.  His vision was clear.

“There you are,” said the woman.  Stripped of the haze, her face was all cut-glass angles and dark, glittering eyes.  A sharp creature’s face, far from human.

“Fairy,” Sherlock whispered, finally finding his voice.  “You’re—”

“Marvelous,” said the woman.  “Do you see how clever he is?”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” said the other one.  “Send him back.”

“Oh, Maili,” said the woman, “you are spoiling my fun.  Why don’t you go back to your flowers and trees, if you are so offended?  Go play in the muck and let me have my prize.”

Sherlock swept his gaze over the assembled women – no, the _fairies_ – as they tittered and smirked.  With skin tones ranging from darkest night to milky white, others sporting pastel hues, all garbed in silken gowns of every conceivable color, they made a flamboyant pack.  The fairy with the moss green gown and fawnskin hair was the plainest among the bunch, but all had an ethereal beauty that set Sherlock’s nerves on edge.  All had pointed ears.

Maili’s pale face flushed.  “You shouldn’t laugh.  We’ve already gone too far, Eirene.”

“The Queen wants a child,” said the woman – _Eirene_.  “Who am I to offer one she won’t find satisfactory?  Better I keep it for myself and not trouble her.”

“We were to return the ones she—”

“Oh, she won’t want any of them,” said Eirene, waving a hand.  “She thinks she wants a child, but she only wants her _own child._  Nothing else will do.  Why should I give a bitter dreamer my darling boy?”

A hush fell around the circle; the giggles were muted as the Fairies exchanged nervous glances.  Maili clenched her fists in the silk of her gown and bit her lip.  “You should not say such things.”

Eirene’s answering smile was cold.  “We are Tylwyth Teg.  She is Unseelie.”

“She is still the Queen.”

“Enough of this,” said Eirene.  She stood, dislodging Sherlock from her lap like she might drop a doll after playing with it.  She took one of his wrists and led him away from the circle.  “He can decide if he wants to stay here or go back.”  To Sherlock, “Come along, sweetling.  I would show you your new home.”

Powerless to resist, Sherlock fell into step behind the fairy.  Now that he could see, he surveyed the area, fear giving way to wonder.  They were in a forest, but this was nothing like the wood he had wandered into with Redbeard.  Everything was brighter, as if the contrast had been turned up.  The surrounding trees curled into cunning shapes: here a throne, there the likeness of a man and woman in a tender embrace.  Birds flitted through the trees, jewel-tone feathers winking in the sunlight.  A damselfly flashed past, each iridescent wing the length of Sherlock’s arm.

“Do you know where we are?” said Eirene.

“In Faerie.”  They could be nowhere else.

Eirene smiled indulgently.  “Clever boy.”

They walked along a footpath worn down by countless wanderers before them.  The trees rose, caged them in; apples hung ripe and heavy from their boughs.  Eirene reached up and plucked one of the fruit, fat and golden.  “Here.”

Sherlock took the proffered apple, but as they walked, he let it drop from his hand to lie, abandoned, on the ground.  Eirene was oblivious; her jet-black eyes were fixed on the path before them, shining with pride each time she stopped Sherlock to show him a new wonder.  Mushrooms as large as trees, parasols blotting out the sunlight; toads the size of oxen lumbering through the undergrowth; flowers whose petals formed delicate cups, capturing water from the rivulets of broken streams.  Eirene bent and picked one of the flowers, taking a delicate sip and sighing.

“A colder, cleaner drink you will never find,” she said.  “Would you like some?”

Sherlock shook his head, trying not to lick his lips.  The summer sun beat down just as hot and muggy in Faerie as it had in the human world, and he was parched.

Eirene drained the cup.  Dropping the flower, she pulled Sherlock further along the path.  Her bare foot came down on the flower with a decisive step, crushing its petals under her heel.

The gaggle of Fairies came into view, though Sherlock didn’t think they’d turned around during their walk.  He was greeted by coos and outstretched hands, fingers flexing as though to beckon a dog.  Only Maili stood apart, expression pinched.

“This world is very lovely, is it not, sweetling?” said Eirene as she resumed her seat, tugging Sherlock to sit beside her.

“Yes,” said Sherlock.

“You should stay here,” piped up one of Eirene’s retinue – a wisp of a girl with skin the blue of a summer sky.  “Stay here forever and play with us.”

Sherlock flicked his eyes around the circle, making a pretense of studying each fairy in their turn.  His gaze snagged on Maili, for behind her sat his backpack.  His stomach grumbled at the thought of the chocolate digestives hidden inside.

“Oh, the poor dear is hungry,” said another fairy.

“That is easily solved,” said Eirene.  “What would you like, sweetling?  Another apple?”

“No,” said Sherlock.  “I’m not hungry.”

“We have all kinds of delicacies here,” said Eirene, ignoring him.  “Larks drowned in mead.  Fertilized duck eggs.  Viper wine.”

“Can we play with him?” asked the blue-skinned fairy.  “I want to see the little darling dance.”

Eirene nodded, magnanimous.  “Of course.  I’m sure he’s nimble on his feet.  Aren’t you, sweetling?”

The fairies clapped and cheered as their blue-skinned sister stood and sidled up to Sherlock.  Sitting beside him, she threaded her fingers through his hair and crooned.   _“Such_ a little darling!”

“That’s enough,” said Maili.  “He’s only a child.”

“Stop spoiling our fun,” said Eirene, her tone frosty.

“Can you dance, little darling?” asked the blue-skinned fairy.  She tipped Sherlock’s chin up with a forefinger and met his wide-eyed stare.  “Will you dance for us?”

Sherlock felt the force of the fairy’s words wrap around his mind, softening wariness into muddled complacency.  Tension bled out of him, loosening his shoulders and sparking a restless energy in his feet.  He could dance—he would do anything for her—he would dance until she bade him stop, dance until his feet bled, until the cracked soles of his wellies fell apart.

“I can’t,” he said, coming back to himself with a jolt.  He shuddered like he’d been doused in glacial water.  Unpleasant, but it gave him an instant of clarity.  He seized it with both hands.  Looking down at his wellies, he said, “Not with these…”

“Well, take them off,” said the blue-skinned fairy.

“I can’t—can’t dance barefoot,” said Sherlock.  Seeing an argument form on the fairy’s lips, he hastened to add, “I’ve got other shoes in my backpack.  Can I…”

“Of course.”  The firmness in Maili’s voice startled Sherlock.  Heads all around the circle turned to watch as she strode over to Sherlock, his backpack hanging from one hand.  She held it out to him, meeting his eyes with a hard stare as he took it.  She knew.  Knew Sherlock knew she knew.  The backpack was a leaden weight in his hands as she released the handle.  “There you are.”

“Thank you.”  Sherlock studied her, wary, but Maili’s face betrayed no emotion.  His hands shook as he fiddled with the zip, rifled around inside.  The sleeve of chocolate digestives crinkled as he shoved it aside, searching.  He furrowed his brow.

“What is it?” Eirene asked, sounding bored.

Sherlock looked up at her with wide, nervous eyes.  “It’s only…”

“What, sweetling?”  The pet name was belied by a hint of annoyance.  “Speak up.”

“I…”  Sherlock glanced at Maili, back at Eirene.  “I… found something.  Something that wasn’t here before.”

“What is it?” Eirene repeated.

Sherlock mumbled, eyes downcast.  Tripped over words and began to tremble like an aspen leaf.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” said Eirene.  She snatched the backpack from Sherlock and plunged her slim, white hand inside.

And _shrieked._

Maili was moving before Eirene’s cry faded, throwing a hand before her and uttering a sound that was someplace between speech and snarl – indistinct, inhuman.  A blinding detonation of light erupted in the circle, sending fairies reeling and screaming in shock.  Sherlock staggered to his feet.  He jerked the backpack from Eirene’s numb fingers, still open and disgorging its contents onto the ground.  Then a hand closed around his wrist and he was being dragged, dragged into a sprint with stars burning on the backs of his eyelids.

“Hurry!” he heard Maili hiss.  “Faster!  Run faster!”

The breath burned in Sherlock’s lungs as he stumbled to keep pace.  Maili’s grip on his wrist was painfully tight.  As his vision began piecing itself back together, the forest resolved into a kaleidoscope of mayhem around him.  Everything had grown darker, the shadows longer.  Even the birds were flint-eyed, their music mutating into shrill screams.  The shrieks of the fairies faded into the distance as they ran.

“This way,” Maili said.  “Hurry!  Hurry!”

After what seemed an eternity, they stopped at the edge of a pond.  Maili’s chest rose and fell with panting breaths as she knelt, checking Sherlock over.  “I am sorry about… all that,” she said.  “Eirene is capricious, even for our kind.”

“Oh,” said Sherlock.  He didn’t know what ‘capricious’ meant, but he wasn’t about to admit it.  Dropping his gaze to the backpack clutched in one white-knuckled fist, he stared vacantly – and then sharply, a frisson of fear spiking through him.  “My magnifying glass!”

“It must have fallen out.  You’ll have to leave it.”

“It was my father’s,” said Sherlock.  An antique, passed down from father to son, it had been in the Holmes family for generations.  And—and it was more than that.  The plain, iron-alloy handle had burned Eirene to the touch, giving Maili the perfect moment to strike.  In that instant, the magnifying glass had gone from coveted object to protective talisman.  It wrenched Sherlock somewhere inside to lose such a thing.

“I am sorry,” said Maili.  “But there’s no time.  I…”  She trailed off, bit her lip.  “I hope you can forgive us.  We aren’t all so awful.”

Sherlock’s heart hammered against his ribs as a sob threatened to choke him.  “But—but my magnifying—”

 _“Maili!”_  Eirene’s voice, cutting through the foliage like sharpened steel.  “Maili, give him back to me!  Give me back my sweetling!”

“Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes,” said Maili.  “For now.”

And, placing her hand at the small of his back, she pushed him into the water.

-

Sherlock broke the surface of the pond spluttering and gasping.  As water and pond scum and the echoes of Eirene’s furious screams drained from his ears, he became aware of a frantic barking.  And, even more frantic: his brother’s voice.

“Sherlock!”  Meaty hands clamped around his shoulders and dragged him onto the banks of the pond.  Dazed, Sherlock blinked.  His brother stared down at him.  His eyes – usually remote, disapproving – were wild.  The freckles splashed across his nose and cheeks were vivid against his ashen skin.  “Sherlock.  Can you hear me?”

“I…”  But Sherlock’s focus was lost as Redbeard bowled into him, licking his face with gusto.  Sherlock scratched the dog behind the ears.  “Hullo, Redbeard.”

“Down,” Mycroft snapped.   _“Down!”_

Redbeard subsided with a cagey side-eye at the elder Holmes brother.  He huddled close against Sherlock’s side and huffed his relief.

Sherlock felt Mycroft’s gaze flick over him, cataloguing every miniscule detail.  The words he spoke were a proclamation, but fear clung in them like grime in the tracks of a boot.  “You’re unharmed.”

Sherlock stared at his brother, confused.  Why would he say such a thing?  “M’not hurt.”

“What happened?”

Furrowing his brow, Sherlock tried to puzzle through the past hour.  He had… he had…  “I fell into the pond.  Think I saw a… a fish.”  A glimmer of pale, cold flesh darting through the water.  Yes, it must have been a fish.

“Sherlock.”  Mycroft’s voice was taut.  “Do you remember when you left the house?”

“Right after…”  And the words crumbled on Sherlock’s tongue.  He had left the house after lunch, with the midday sun presiding over his journey.  Now, shadows crowded around them.  Beyond the cover of trees, lurid streaks of violet and salmon unfurled in the sky like pennants heralding twilight.

Sherlock looked wide-eyed at his brother, panic creeping past doubt.  “What happened?”

“You lost an entire afternoon,” Mycroft said.  “You truly don’t remember?”

“I—I don’t,” Sherlock stammered.  Even as he searched for them, groping in the dark corners of his mind, he felt the memories crumble in his fingers.  They were like spun sugar: delicate, lovely.  Breakable.   “I don’t remember anything…”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said, leaning close, “close your eyes and _think._  Quickly.  Try to recall whatever you can before the memories are lost.”

“But—”

“Just _do it.”_

It was those last two words, sharp with something akin to fear, that startled Sherlock into obedience.   _Mycroft’s not afraid of anything._  One of the foundations of Sherlock’s life was being shaken, and he had to restore balance.

“There… there was a hand,” he managed.

“A hand.”

“Yeah.  Yes.”  Sherlock closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his forehead.  “And I fell… no… it _pulled_ me in…”

“Go on.”

Sherlock bit his lip and scrabbled for the memories, but each one shattered under his scrutiny.  The fragmented pieces were all that remained – hints, suggestions, but not enough to paint a complete picture.  Florid colors arrayed around him like flowers.  The weight of an apple in his hand, its skin warmed by sunlight.  A piercing shriek as the pale hand disappeared into the backpack, fingers closing around—

“My magnifying glass,” Sherlock said.  At Mycroft’s vacant stare, he slung the sodden backpack off his shoulders and peered inside.  The waterlogged sleeve of digestives was slumped on its side, but the magnifying glass was nowhere to be seen.  Shoulders slumping, Sherlock said, “I lost it.  She… she touched it, and it burned her.”

Mycroft was silent for a long moment.  Tension was slashed into every line of his body.  Then, nostrils flaring, he said, “I see.”

“I… I know I should, too, but I can’t,” Sherlock confessed.  His heart knocked a frantic drumbeat against his ribcage.  The events he had just relayed were disintegrating from memory.  His mouth felt dry, as though his own body was turning traitor, trying to scrub the story from existence.  His voice shook when he said, “W-Why can’t I see it?”

“Because,” said Mycroft, “they took the memories from you.”

“Who?”

Mycroft’s eyes slid toward the pond.  His expression was calm, but at his sides, his hands were curled into trembling fists.  The fingers of one hand opened, closed.  A pantomime of throttling.

Then he looked back to Sherlock and said, “The Fair Folk.”

-

Later, Sherlock learned that his disappearance was not a solitary event.  On that day – the twenty-first of June, in the year 1984 – a total of one-hundred children in the United Kingdom were spirited away to Faerie.  Crossing streets and walking through doors, stepping over streams and tromping, heedless, through mushroom rings.  They were plucked out of the human world with as little fanfare as ripe apples being plucked from the tree.

Some witnessed the disappearances.  A mother in Downderry ran screaming from the beach when she saw her son race across the sand and wink out of existence with the first footfall into salt water.  They spent hours dredging the coast for him, certain the mother was mad with grief.  Children didn’t simply _vanish._

Apparently they did.  When the Fair Folk had a fancy for them.

Hours after the disappearances, the first child was restored with as little ceremony as it had been stolen.  The girl – a swarthy little thing from Edinburgh – was found wandering the hills on the outskirts of the city, blinking and dazed.  Her shoes were missing and her tattered socks were caked with dried blood.  When asked what had happened, she said she couldn’t remember.  She was taken to hospital and slept for three days straight.

“I had a nightmare,” she later reported.  “I was dancing and I couldn’t stop.”

As the remaining children popped back into existence, the frazzled nation began putting two and two together.  Of course it had been the work of the Fair Folk.  Nobody else could perpetrate such an… _uncanny_ crime.

Back then, there weren’t many Fair Folk living among the humans.  The ones who preferred human company were considered rather queer by both humans and Fae, and they were immediately recognizable due to the Glamor Laws.  The only concealments fairies were allowed were long hair to cover their pointed ears, contact lenses to conceal eldritch irises, hats to hide horns.  Physical attributes, something that could be removed.  No magic.

The few fairies living among humans caught hell for the missing children.  Verbal abuse, assault in the streets, cold iron and colder glares brandished.  The fairies who could not conceal their status were the easiest victims.  A brownie, scarce three feet tall, was mugged walking home from Sainsbury’s with his shopping.  In a seaside village, a merrow’s cap was stolen and ripped to shreds in front of her, preventing her from fleeing into the ocean.  The more likely suspects – goblins, redcaps, spriggans – had been chased out of the country centuries ago.

Humans with fairy ancestry were likewise harassed.  Mixed-blood, or mazikeen _,_ they were called.  It didn’t matter how many generations had passed since a human man or woman had a misalliance with a fairy; it took only a drop of Fae blood to create the tell-tale traits.  Slightly pointed ears.  A feral energy.  Haunting beauty.  It was no great mental leap to see selkie heritage in a woman’s liquid-dark eyes and generous curves or Seelie in a man’s willowy build and angular face.  And there was a _sense,_ something beyond concrete genetics.  Something that made humans shy away, instinct cautioning them.   _Other, apart.  Dangerous._

In the end, it took a full week for all the children to be returned.  All save one:  a girl, four years old, who had been ensorcelled to dance and promptly forgotten when the fairies grew bored of her.  She danced and danced until her little heart gave out.

The nation went into a frenzy.  New laws and restrictions were put into place.  Harsher punishments were promised, if not enacted.  No fairy would admit to stealing a child, and the Queen of the Unseelie would not condescend to meet with human delegates.  The tenuous friendship between the two worlds was severed.  The caution against entering Faerie was transmuted into a ban, as strong and cold as iron.  Further immigrants to the United Kingdom from Faerie were refused, and the current Fae citizens issued visas to be renewed every few years.  The rest of the world watched with bated breath as the nation cut itself off from the uncanny like they would amputate a gangrenous limb.

The children who were taken – one-hundred gone, ninety-nine restored – would never be quite the same.  Though none of them knew it, all were touched by an ethereal hand.  All grew and developed qualities that could only be described as _otherworldly_ :  a wild aspect, an ability to make any plant in their garden flourish, a skill for baking that warmed the heart of anyone who ate their food.  Quirks, tokens of a time spent in a strange land.

Sherlock had always been keen-witted.   _The brain of a scientist or a philosopher,_ Mycroft would say.  But he, too, felt the press of that ethereal hand.  He kept quiet about it; kept the knowledge close, wary of how others might view it.  He was weird enough as it was.  He wasn’t inclined to pour fuel on that particular fire.

The stolen children became known as the Liminal Children.  Sherlock didn’t know who’d thought up that ridiculous moniker; a politician who fancied himself a poet, probably.  It didn’t matter.  His time in Faerie was a splintered memory, as removed from him as the account was from any other person in the world who had heard of the event.

Years passed.  Sherlock grew up.  He went to public school and on to uni for a degree in chemistry.  He may have been able to resist the apple Eirene offered in the grove, years ago, but he could not resist the sensuous promise of the needle.  Morphine, cocaine.  Overdose, overdose, overdose.

In the end, it was Lestrade’s threat that pushed Sherlock to sober up—well.  Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true, but Sherlock thought controlled usage was a fair sight better than overdosing three times in as many years.  He kept stashes squirreled away in his flat for danger nights, but as time passed and Lestrade permitted him to consult on _(solve)_ cases, the intervals between danger nights lengthened.  Sherlock bought better clothes, took care of his appearance.  Made himself a professional: someone with authority.  Someone who deserved respect.

He was very nearly functioning.

Not everything was so easily remedied.  Sherlock still carried with him the mark of the Liminal Children, an aura that could be neither defined nor denied.  People sensed something _off_ about him and gave him a wide berth.  

Only one person - a timid, mousy woman named Molly - tried to befriend him.  Small and mumbling, perpetually struggling to force out an invitation to coffee, she was more annoying than anything else.  Even more annoying was that something about her niggled at Sherlock, persistent but always out of reach.  Like a gnat he couldn’t swat.  She reminded him of someone, he was sure, but no matter how much he searched through his Mind Palace, he could never make the connection.  It was infuriating.  Well, no matter.  If he made enough snide remarks, he was certain she would leave him alone eventually.  

Sherlock didn’t need anyone.  All he needed was the Work, and the occasional hit.

That was all he needed.

Until… until.

Until Sherlock, working on a hemoglobin experiment at Bart’s Hospital in London, bemoaned his shite digs to a commiserating Stamford.  Good chap, Stamford; no brilliant mind behind that placid expression, but sharper than most of the morons running roughshod over the world.  Disarmingly easy to talk to.

Stamford returned to the lab hours later with a man in tow.  Pipette in hand, Sherlock stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes.  And fought not to stare.

The man – short and tanned with bruises of sleepless nights under his eyes – was clearly an army doctor, clearly sporting a psychosomatic limp.  The flat stare he directed around the room spoke of detachment, a farce of attention.  Mentally limping out of his own life.   _I’ll just be off, then._

All of these details took a backseat in Sherlock’s mind.  A deduction rose past the others, flying above them like a war banner.  The memory of Eirene kissing his brow had been long since obliterated, but she had left more than the ability to see the world of Faerie – she had given him a second sight.  An instinct for detecting the Fae.

 _Mazikeen_ , Sherlock thought.   _Half-blood.  Redcap._

“Well,” said the man, “bit different from my day.”

Sherlock asked for Mike’s phone.  “Sorry.  It’s in my coat.”

The man fished his mobile out of his pocket.  “Er, here.  Use mine.”

Sherlock pretended mild surprise.  “Oh.  Thank you.”

He took the mobile, deductions tumbling through his mind. Scuff marks around the edge of the power connection.  Drunk, shaking hands.  A cousin—no, a brother.  Obvious. _Harry Watson.  From Clara.  xxx._

Sherlock thumbed open the mobile and began typing.  Striving for a casual tone, forcing his eyes to stay on the screen, he said to the man – the mazikeen _,_ the soldier, the doctor, the enigma:  “Afghanistan or Iraq?”

 


	2. Drums in his ear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My version of fairies is loosely based on Skye Alexander's "Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore."
> 
> TW for discussions of suicide and violence. 
> 
> I'm sorry that this chapter is so recap-heavy. Later chapters will diverge more from BBC Sherlock canon. 
> 
> Also, for the sake of clarity: Soo Lin = Su Lin. Apparently Mofftiss did some bizarre Mandarin/Cantonese hybrid in TBB, although most names and pinyin in the episode are Mandarin. Please let me know if I've made any mistakes re: Mandarin vs. Cantonese or any other cultural snafus.

 

John Watson, as far as Sherlock could tell, was nothing like a redcap.

A savage breed of fairy, the redcap lurked in places steeped in violence, sustained by phantoms of bloodshed while it awaited unwitting passers-by.  Violence nourished redcaps – the heart-pounding clash of steel, of bodies, of _wills_ as each party fought to destroy the other. A redcap deprived of a kill would eventually weaken and die.

John, limping across the pavement to shake Sherlock’s hand, seemed to possess none of his ancestor’s ferocity.  They followed Mrs. Hudson up the stairs and Sherlock paused on the landing to watch John drag himself up, step by laborious step.  No, not like a redcap at all.

John raised his head as he hauled himself up another step, meeting Sherlock’s gaze.  Sherlock looked away. He was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment.

As John limped around the flat, Sherlock made a pretense of moving his rubbish about while he took in the army doctor’s appearance.  He didn’t _look_ like a mazikeen.  His eyes were an ordinary shade of blue, his face weathered.  Some accounts suggested that redcaps had long teeth, but John’s appeared normal.  Even his ears looked human: neat crescents without a hint of the characteristic point.  Unheard of in a mazikeen.

_Perhaps the roots of his teeth are long.  If I could procure his dental records…_

John punched a pillow into place and sat in an armchair with a grunt.  Looking at him, Sherlock had the briefest moment of doubt: could his second sight be wrong?

 _No,_ he told himself.  John may have had Fae ancestry, but it was paper-thin.  Redcaps had been hunted out of the United Kingdom over two-hundred years ago.

His musings were interrupted by Lestrade, come to announce the fourth suicide.  Sherlock waltzed out of the flat and into the stairwell, jubilant. Four suicides and a note!

A shout from the flat made him pause mid-way down the stairs.  “ _Damn my leg!”_

Sherlock blinked, disoriented.  His mind flew back to Bart’s Hospital, back to the lab, back to the man who was mentally limping out of his own life.

Sherlock climbed back up the stairs.  Stopping just beyond the threshold of the door, he schooled his features to nonchalance tugged on one glove.

“You’re a doctor,” said Sherlock.  “In fact, you’re an army doctor.” He tugged on the second glove.

John reached for the cane propped beside his chair and dragged himself to his feet.  “Yes.”

“Any good?”

 _“Very_ good.”

“Seen a lot of injuries, then.  Violent deaths.”

A hum.  “Yes.”

Sherlock felt himself compelled to walk across the threshold, to drift into John’s orbit.  “Bit of trouble too, I bet.”

“Of course, yes.  Enough for a lifetime.  Far too much.”

They were standing scarcely two feet apart, now.  This close, Sherlock thought he could sense a force surrounding John Watson, as gripping and inescapable as the pull of gravity.  The sheer power of it sent a thrill through Sherlock. Perhaps John Watson was not so distant from his redcap ancestry after all.

“Want to see some more?” Sherlock asked.

A gleam of something like _life_ came into John’s eyes.  “Oh, God, yes.”

-

They went to Lauriston Gardens to view Jennifer Wilson’s corpse.  As John stooped beside the body, Sherlock caught himself watching again and tore his gaze away.  The twinge of disappointment grew into a lance between his ribs. How could a mazikeen, a former army doctor – Fae, killer, and healer at once – be so _dull?_ So helpless?

Sherlock shrugged off his misgivings and focused on the Work.  Through the whirl of clues, the deduction about her pink case slammed into him.  He dashed down the spiral staircase and onto the pavement outside, scanning his surroundings for nearby skips.

Later, ensconced in 221B with three nicotine patches plastered to his arm and his hands steepled beneath his chin, Sherlock realized that he had quite forgotten John.

_Oh._

He chewed on the fact for a moment.  John was sharper than most, no doubt.  A fascinating contradiction, yes. But on the whole… on the whole, John was too normal.   _Boring._

Sherlock sighed, eyes flickering open to study the ceiling.  What had he expected? That John would be a carbon copy of his monstrous forebear?  Ridiculous. It wasn’t as if John was going to die for lack of bloodshed.

Fishing his mobile out of his pocket, Sherlock composed a text to John.   _Baker Street.  Come at once if convenient.  SH_  If the mazikeen couldn’t be entertaining, he might as well be useful.

Where _was_ John, anyway?  Had he limped into the street and got himself run down by a car?  Or perhaps Sally Donovan had got to him, scared him off with her ill omens about dead bodies and Sherlock putting them there.  She loved to trot that one out. Or – most likely – he’d run afoul of Mycroft. His brother had a flair for the dramatic that made Sherlock look positively sane by comparison.  If ever there was a time for John’s redcap ancestry to manifest, it would be now. He could fly into a rage and kill Mycroft, ridding Sherlock of an incessant headache.

A smile quirked the corners of Sherlock’s mouth.  One could only hope.

He tapped out a second text.   _If inconvenient, come anyway.  SH_

Sherlock’s musings on John drifted away as he slipped into a different stream of thought.  He was so immersed in the case that he barely noticed the door open, shut. John limped into the sitting room.

“What are you doing?”

Sherlock slitted his eyes open and studied John.  The spasms in his left hand and the furrow between his eyes suggested an altercation with Mycroft, but if John _had_ managed to kill Sherlock’s brother, he was doing a bang up job concealing it.

At Sherlock’s bidding, John sent the text to Jennifer Wilson’s phone.  And then, despite having dismissed John as _ordinary,_ Sherlock explained his deduction about the pink case.  That was the frailty of genius: it needed an audience.

“Well?” he asked, meaningfully.

John looked skeptical.  “’Well’ what?”

“Well, you could just sit here and watch telly.”

“What, you want me to come with you?”

Sherlock was taken aback for the space of a breath.  Surprisingly, he did.

-

And then they were racing down alleyways and over rooftops, chasing a serial killer with the night wind on their faces and adrenaline singing through their veins.  Sherlock hadn’t expected John to follow – hadn’t expected him to keep up – but John did both, cane forgotten as his body seized control.

Sherlock raced up stairs and vaulted over the sheer drops between rooftops.  His pulse hammered in his ears as he ran, reveling in the thrill of it all.

He was running and then _he was running, stumbling over his feet as the forest resolved into a kaleidoscope of mayhem around him.  Everything was darker, the shadows longer—_

The toe of Sherlock’s shoe struck the lip of the rooftop and he staggered, momentum pitching him toward the edge.  He careened, arms windmilling, the drop into the alleyway yawning before him – and something seized the back of the Belstaff, hauling him out of gravity’s maw.  He flailed as he fell back onto the rooftop. Onto _John,_ because John had saved him.

“Fuck,” John grunted.

Sherlock rolled off of him.  His heart thudded with the urgency of cheating death.  “Sorry.”

“You’re heavier than you look,” John said.  He stood and held out a hand to help Sherlock up.  “Alright?”

“Fine,” said Sherlock.  A forest filled with eldritch terrors.  A pale hand clasped around his wrist, dragging him through the foliage.

John’s eyes darted from Sherlock to the ledge.  “The killer?”

“Right.”  Shaking off the images, Sherlock resumed the chase.

They missed the killer, in the end.  The American in the cab couldn’t have possibly murdered Jennifer Wilson and the others.  Defeated – and _exhilarated_ – Sherlock and John returned to Baker Street.

They lingered in the foyer for a moment, leaning against the wall and sniggering like mischievous schoolboys.  John’s laugh was as weathered and threadbare as a careworn blanket, and high-pitched in a way that should have been maddening but wasn’t.  As Sherlock tipped into laughter after him, he found he liked the two sounds together – threadbare and low rumbling. A strangely agreeable harmony.

Angelo came ‘round to give John his cane.  Watching John hanging out the door, lifting the cane in farewell, Sherlock could not fight back a smile.

-

It was the cabbie.  Of course it was the cabbie.

“I don’t wanna kill you, Mr. Holmes,” Jefferson Hope informed him.  “I’m gonna talk to you and then you’re going to kill yourself.”

Sitting in the front seat with his hands clasped loosely over his knees, Hope was apathetic.  From the smear of shaving cream behind his ear to the pilled, ill-fitting jumper he wore, every aspect of the man suggested lifeless indifference.

Sherlock thought of the mazikeen up in 221B, of his flat, vacant eyes.  He dismissed the idea immediately. If Hope was suicidal, he wouldn’t waste time making other people kill themselves.

Sparing a final glance up at the windows of 221B, Sherlock opened the cab door and climbed in.

The ride to Roland-Kerr Further Education College passed in a reverent kind of hush.  Sherlock sat at a dining table across from Jefferson Hope and a pair of pill bottles was placed before him.

Hope rambled.  Incessantly. Sherlock was no stranger to ranting criminals, but something about Hope nagged at him.  A sense of premonition; the tickle before a sneeze. Frowning, Sherlock furrowed his brow and strained his first and second sights alike.

And _there_ :  a glimmer like heat rising off pavement.  Sherlock was startled out of his concentration and the waves vanished.  All at once, pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Hope’s wheedling words and vacant tone.  The air of neglect surrounding him. Even the whimsical nature of the game – a game of life or death, each encapsulated in their own little bottle.

“Ensorcelled,” he said, quietly.  Almost to himself.

Hope paused mid-rant.  Then a smile pulled his mouth wolfishly wide.

“Oooh, well done,” said Hope.  Not Hope. Hope was little more than a puppet, a mouthpiece wrapped in flesh and bone.  His lips drew back from yellowing teeth. “Very good. _Very good!”_

“Who are you?” said Sherlock.

“Jefferson Hope,” said the puppet, gesturing to himself.  In a singsong tone, he added, “Ob-vi-ous-ly!”

Sherlock leaned forward.  The Fae were not able to lie, but as long as Sherlock demanded names from the physical person of Jefferson Hope, he would be told he was speaking to Jefferson Hope.  Fairies loved their loopholes.

“Who are you?” he said again.  “Who is controlling the body of Jefferson Hope?”

“Hope’s brain controls his body,” said the puppet, flashing a cheeky smirk that did not reach its eyes.

“Then who—”

“Oh, stop,” said the puppet.  “This is _so_ boring.  I’ve got an idea.”  Fetching up one pill bottle from the tabletop, the puppet uncapped it with deft fingers.  “Why don’t we keep playing the game? I’ll make you a solemn vow. If you win, I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“You’ll be dead,” Sherlock retorted.  “No – your puppet will be dead, and then it’s of no use to me.”

“So callous!” exclaimed the puppet.  “Honestly, it’s no use to anybody. Defective, remember?”  It tapped the newsboy cap, indicating the aneurysm in its cradle of swollen blood vessels.  “Any second now could be _pop_ goes the weasel.”  Dropping the hand, it spilled the pill out of the bottle to lay flat on its palm.  “What do you say, Sherlock Holmes? Are you ready to play chess?”

“It’s not chess,” Sherlock said.  “It’s chance.”

The puppet’s lips drew back impossibly further, invisible fingers hooking the corners of Hope’s mouth and pulling until the philtrum split like a ripe fruit.  Tears gathered at the corners of the cabbie’s eyes, but the puppeteer took no notice.

“Play with me, Sherlock,” said the puppet, its speech garbled and red.  “Play the game.”

Sherlock picked up the second bottle and upended it.  Held the pill up to the light.

The thunder of gunfire reverberated through his ears, and the puppet dropped like a stone.  Sherlock stared, dumbfounded. Then he whirled around to face the window. A bullet hole was punched through the glass, cracks radiating out like a sunburst.  Beyond the window, the room in the building beside Roland-Kerr was dark. Abandoned.

Sherlock rounded on Jefferson Hope.  The cabbie’s body lay crumpled on the floor, a pool of blood widening around him.  Crimson blotted the front of his jumper: a fatal shot, clean through the heart. Hope’s eyes roved about in bewilderment.  He made a wet, wheezing noise.

Sherlock muttered an oath.  The puppeteer was gone, discarding Hope like a doll it was no longer interested in playing with.  Hunkering down, Sherlock placed his hands on either side of the dying man’s face.

“Who ensorcelled you?” he demanded.  Hope had to know. Fairies rarely enchanted a complete stranger.  The punishment for ensorcelling humans was severe enough to deter tricking random passers-by.

Hope blinked, whimpered.  Tears streamed down his face.

“The name!” Sherlock shouted.  “Tell me the name!”

Hope’s ruined lips moved.  Blood bubbled in his mouth as he slowly, painstakingly enunciated the word:

“Moriarty.”

-

Sherlock was beset by the Yard the moment he stepped out of Roland-Kerr Further Education College.  They hurried him to an emergency van and draped a violently orange blanket over his shoulders. As officers milled about, cordoning off the area, Lestrade strolled to Sherlock’s side.

According to Lestrade, they had nothing to go on regarding Hope’s killer.  Sherlock gave him a pointed look and the DI rolled his eyes. “Okay, gimme.”

Sherlock stood as clues formed deductions like clay being molded into bricks.   _Not just a marksman; a fighter._ His gaze swiveled around the teeming officers, the flash of police car lights.   _Acclimatized to violence._  He picked out John amidst the throng:  quiet, unobtrusive, hands clasped behind his back.  The picture of normalcy. _Strong moral principle._ As if sensing Sherlock’s scrutiny, John turned and met his gaze.  Sherlock saw the spark that had lit John’s eyes hours ago. _History of military service._

The spark was now a roaring blaze.

The deductions crumbled on Sherlock’s tongue.  He stared at John, eyes narrowing as the connection became clear.  Oh. _Oh._

“Actually, do you know what?” said Sherlock.  “Ignore me.”

Lestrade’s protestations faded into the background as he strode over to John.  The mazikeen’s expression was arranged in a stiff mask of innocence.

“Been a dreadful business, hasn’t it?” John asked.  He might as well have stapled a sign on his forehead reading _guilty._  “Dreadful.”

“Good shot,” said Sherlock, and John’s façade fell.

As they left the crime scene, giggling undercut by John’s hissed warnings, they were waylaid by Mycroft.  John watched in stony silence as Sherlock and his brother exchanged barbs, but he could not escape Mycroft’s reptilian stare.

“So good to see you again, Dr. Watson,” he said.

“Not really,” said John.  “You were quite creepy, if I recall.”

Mycroft drew back, nose wrinkling as if he had trod in a cowpat.  He forced his mouth into an unctuous smile. “I see you’ve yet to tire of my little brother.  Isn’t that lucky for you, Sherlock? It must be so nice to have a friend.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to know,” Sherlock drawled.  John snickered.

Mycroft’s smile curdled, but his tone remained light.  “Well, it would certainly take a _special_ friend to put up with you, now wouldn’t it?  I must commend you, Dr. Watson, on your patience.  Positively inhuman.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said John.  “I seem to be running out of it as we speak.”

They left Mycroft to stew in his own thwarted smugness and strode companionably down the street, seeking dim sum and fortune cookies.  As they went, chatting about war wounds and lucky guesses and the enigma of Moriarty, Sherlock stole glances at John from the corner of his eye.  Something about him seemed… lighter. Less burdened, less beaten down. It was as if the life burning in his eyes had scorched a path through his entire body, suffusing him with palpable energy.  He seemed more alive and real than the man who had limped into Bart’s Hospital only days ago.

 _John Watson,_ thought Sherlock, opening the door to the restaurant and ushering John inside, _you are remarkable, aren’t you._

-

Sherlock made a room for John in his Mind Palace.

Not a large room, mind.  Barely the size of a broom cupboard, it was tucked away far from anything of significance.  Nowhere near the foyer, the galleries, the halls. He didn’t want John to distract from the Work.

Instead, John’s room was placed near the study.  Close to Sherlock’s unsolved mysteries, that he might open the door and pick out scraps of John to study at his leisure:  here the steadiness of his hands, there the nerves of steel. Nothing frivolous or irrelevant. He left his knowledge of John Watson in a cardboard box on the floor, the way one might leave a box of lightbulbs.  Gathering dust until they were needed.

Until, rooting through that very box one evening, Sherlock came across a sound: threadbare and low rumbling.  A harmony of laughter.

Lying on the sofa with eyes closed, Sherlock frowned.  In his Mind Palace, he turned the sound over and over, inspecting every facet and nuance.  There was no reason to keep it, really. It had no practical use.

But for all his rationale, Sherlock couldn’t find the will to delete the sound.  He let it slip from his hands and tumble back into the cardboard box, spared for the time being.

-

“We were at uni together,” said Sebastian Wilkes.  Leaning back in his chair with legs crossed and fingers interlinked, he squinted at Sherlock as if trying to detect a slight of hand.  “This guy here had a trick he used to do.”

“It’s not a trick.”  The protest was small, feeble.  Still smarting from John’s correction – not _friend,_ only _colleague_ – Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to care.

“He could look at you and tell you your whole life story.”

“Yes,” said John.  “I’ve seen him do it.”

“Put the wind up everybody,” said Sebastian.  “We hated him, and that wasn’t even the _weirdest_ thing.”  He paused for dramatic effect and barreled onward just as John was opening his mouth to speak.  “He had this freakish way of spotting Fae. Don’t you remember, Sherlock, how you ousted Professor Alba?  Old fellow had grown his hair out to cover the pointy ears.” He tapped one of his own ears to illustrate.  “Never thought much of it. Then Sherlock swans in one day, high off his tits on cocaine, and demands how Seelie gentry come to teach maths.”  Sebastian guffawed, oblivious to his guests’ silence. “I’ll never forget the look on that old goat’s face!”

Sherlock sat motionless, acutely aware of John’s presence beside him.   _John knew,_ he reminded himself.  A mantra to ward off the shame.   _John knew, John knew, John_ knows _about the cocaine, the heroin…_

But John only said, “Wait, Sherlock, you… you can see the Fae?”

Sherlock forced himself to look at John.  The mazikeen’s face was open with curiosity and devoid of the disgust he had expected.  Averting his eyes, Sherlock said, “Anyone can see Fae.”

John huffed in exasperation.  “Well, yes, but you can—”

“He could sense them,” Sebastian cut in, with the intrusive doggedness of one who is usually the center of attention.

“I merely observed,” said Sherlock.  Better to nip this in the bud than let slip that he was one of the Liminal Children.  They were an aberration, a quirky footnote in the history books. John might take the news in stride, but Sebastian would be insufferable about it.  “With the Science of Deduction.”

Sebastian smirked.  “He could sense the mongrels, too.”

Did John tense, or was Sherlock merely imagining things?  “Mazikeen.”

“Hmm, what?”

 _“Mazikeen,”_ Sherlock repeated, dragging out each syllable with care.  “Not ‘mongrels.’”

“Er, yeah,” said Sebastian, shrugging.  “Whatever.” With a wide, close-lipped smile, he leaned forward in his chair.  “I’m glad you could make it over. We’ve had a break-in.”

As they left the bank, John said, “He’s a right twat, isn’t he?”

Sherlock hummed, pulling out his mobile and starting to text Lestrade.

John wouldn’t let the matter drop.  “Can’t believe you were friends with him.”

“I wouldn’t say we were ‘friends,’” said Sherlock, unable to curb the bite in his tone.  “We were classmates.”

 _Colleagues,_ he didn’t say.

-

In Bart’s cafeteria, Sherlock made an appeal to Molly to see Van Coon and Lukis’ bodies.  He complimented her hair. Something nonsensical about the way she’d parted it.

She gave him a withering stare, fingers curled around the salad tongs.  “You’re terribly transparent, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I genuinely think it suits you.”

“Right.”  Molly rolled her eyes.  “Go on. Give me your best puppy-dog eyes, sweetling.”

Sherlock gave it his best effort, mustering the most pitiable expression in his arsenal.  Shaking her head, Molly set down her tray. “Come on, then.”

-

At the National Antiquities Museum, a frazzled Andy explained Su Lin Yao’s prized teapots.  “If they dry out, then the clay can start to crumble. Apparently, you just have to keep making tea in them.”

Beyond the glass, two teapots stood out from the group, the clay polished to a lustrous sheen.  Hundreds of years old, and yet—Sherlock’s hands twitched at his sides. Did Su Lin feel her own mortality when she handled the teapots?  Or were they mere objects to her, nonexistent past the scope of her own life?

“She—she made a peach tea for most of her demonstrations,” Andy said.  “At least, she said she did. I never got to drink it.”

John looked puzzled.  “Why not?”

Andy shrugged.  “She said she had to get it just right.  I dunno, I’d have drunk swill if she offered it to me, but she was…”  He blanched. “She _is_ a bit of a perfectionist.  As you can see.” He swept a hand toward the teapot display.  “I can’t believe she’d up and leave them, but…” Again, a shrug, eloquent beyond words.

-

Andy might have been an infatuated oaf, but he was right about one thing: Su Lin hadn’t abandoned her teapots.

“Fancy a biscuit with that?” Sherlock asked, looming out of the darkness.

Su Lin dropped the teapot with a sharp gasp.  Crouching, Sherlock fetched it out of the air, sparing the relic an untimely demise against the tiled floor.  He pressed the teapot into Su Lin’s trembling fingers.

“Centuries old.  Don’t wanna break that.”  Keeping his tone nonchalant, he added, “But you knew that, of course.  You were probably there when it was fired in the kiln.”

Su Lin’s eyes widened.  “How—”

“I make it my business to know what most people don’t,” Sherlock said, cutting her short.  John stood near the doorway, still shrouded in darkness. Silent, listening. Alert. “I know you are Fae, and you are on the run from the Tong.  What I don’t know is _why.”_

Su Lin pressed her lips together in a bloodless line.  The scent of the tea she had been brewing permeated the air, cloyingly sweet and ripe:  peaches.

“I can see you, you know,” she said, her voice barely louder than a sigh.  “Come here. If I am going to tell this story, I would prefer to tell it only once.”

For an instant, Sherlock swore he could sense John moving, his feet soundless as he drew near.  The awareness of him – part human, part monster – made Sherlock’s nerves prickle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.  But when John came into view, he looked as soft and rumpled as always. A perfect façade of harmlessness.

“Hullo,” he said, offering a hand for Su Lin to shake.  When she made no movement to accept it, he let his hand drop to his side.  He cocked his head. “Your ears are glamored.”

Su Lin brought her fingers to the smooth shell of one ear.  “Yes.”

“That’s bold.”

“China doesn’t have glamor laws,” Sherlock put in.  “And besides, someone with ties to criminal groups probably doesn’t give a toss about our laws.”

Su Lin’s eyes flashed.  “I am no criminal. I left that life behind.”  The conviction in her tone was belied by her ashen face.  “It’s just that I…”

Sherlock understood.  “The Tong are more frightening than the law.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Su Lin.  “If the Tong want to find me, they will.”

“We can help you,” said John.  “Keep you safe.”

Su Lin flicked a disbelieving look at him.  “You don’t know the general. Or Zhi Zhu.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, curiosity piqued.  He had little Chinese, but he did recognize the Pinyin Romanization.  “The Spider.”

Su Lin nodded.  “If Zhi Zhu wants me dead…”  She trailed off, fingers feathering over the clay pots.  There was something at once reverential and tender in that touch, as if she had imbued a deity’s love into the clay with each pouring of tea.

A memory flitted through Sherlock’s mind, as light and fleeting as the brush of a finger across the nape of his neck.   _The impression of an iron handle in his palm, warm with his touch._

“These are no ordinary relics,” he ventured.

Su Lin looked momentarily surprised.  Then she nodded.

“Protective talismans.  The more you treated them, the longer they warded off the Tong.  Until now.” He tilted his head, puzzled. “Why now?”

“Talismans like these…”  Su Lin quieted, running a forefinger along the lid of one pot.  “Made with love, I mean. They can be very powerful, but in order to work indefinitely… the love must be shared.”  She regarded Sherlock with a steady share. “That is the nature of love. It moves between people. It cannot thrive in isolation.”

“Even unrequited love?”

Sherlock glanced at John, surprised by his input.  The mazikeen watched Su Lin with unwavering focus.

“It may last for a time,” said Su Lin.  “Hundreds of years, even, if a fairy tries.  But unrequited love withers and dies, too.”

All at once, the dim lights in the nearby corridors died, plunging them into darkness.  Sherlock tensed; John drew a sharp breath. Su Lin was as still and silent as marble. Then, softly, she said, “Zhi Zhu.  He has found me.”

Sherlock clamped his hands over her shoulders with a rough little shake.  “Tell me why they’re after you.”

“Sherlock,” John hissed.

 _“Tell me!”_ Sherlock demanded, tightening his grip.  Su Lin winced. Her eyes were wide with terror.

“I—I stole from them,” she stammered, her composure in tatters.  “Stole a haul from the general, Shan.”

“What did you steal?”

“Sherlock!” John snapped.  “We don’t have time for this!”

“You stole something from Faerie, didn’t you?”

Su Lin bobbed her head in a frantic nod.  “The—”

The rending _pop_ of a gunshot cut her short, and she screamed.  Sherlock shoved her down and beneath the table, hoping that – and the clinging shadows – would offer her a modicum of safety.  He raced for a nearby pillar and sheltered behind it.

“Careful!” he bellowed.  “Those artefacts are hundreds of years old!”

The ploy worked; the gunshots veered toward him, spattering off the pillar.   _Where is John?  Was he hit?_

A new thunder of gunfire erupted, cutting short the hailstorm with a pained cry.  Through the gloom, Sherlock thought he could make out John leaning around another pillar, arms outstretched for a second shot.  High above, in the gallery overlooking the tea room, a hunched figure shuffled away from the scene.

John took pursuit.  Sherlock’s objections faded as the mazikeen raced through the door and vanished down the corridor.  John, he had come to learn, was monumentally stubborn. And it probably wasn’t a good idea to get between a redcap and his kill.

Sherlock crept out from the shelter of the pillar and stumbled toward the table.  Setting his hands to the top, he felt something sharp and wet slice into his palms.  He drew away with a pained hiss. Fumbled his mobile out of his pocket and lit the torch.

The shattered remains of Su Lin’s teapots were bathed in the light, casting jagged shadows against the table.  Peach tea pooled in the wood grain. Sherlock brought one palm into the beam of light and studied the oozing wounds.  Shallow cuts, drenched and sticky-sweet.

A soft moan dragged Sherlock from his reverie.  Dropping to his knees, he shone the torchlight under the table.  “He’s gone, Su Lin. John is…”

The words died on his lips.  Agony stitched across Su Lin’s face as she lifted one arm, revealing a dark stain of blood blooming on her abdomen.  Setting aside his mobile so its light shone upward, blazing against the bottom of the tabletop, Sherlock shuffled closer.

“What did you steal?” he asked.  Su Lin’s eyes fluttered, closed. “Su Lin!  What did you steal?”

Wincing, Su Lin turned her head and stared at the bottom of the tabletop.  It was as if she could see through the wood, see through to the carnage of her beloved teapots.  Her eyes closed once more and she stilled.

John returned minutes later, expression dark.  “He’s gone. Where…” Then he saw Sherlock’s face.  His eyes widened. “Are you hurt?”

“What?” Sherlock mumbled.

John strode closer, hands out, parting the lapels of the Belstaff.  The brush of his palms against Sherlock’s chest and stomach was so unexpected that he froze.  The touch was brief – _too brief,_ he thought with surprise – and gone.  Worry was etched into the grooves on John’s brow.  “What is it? What’s wrong? Oh, Sherlock, your hands are all cut up…”

Mutely, Sherlock turned and glanced at the table.  John rushed past him and knelt on the floor. Silence fell for a long moment.

Then:  “Oh.”

-

Just as the case was rounding up to a solid seven – ciphers and smuggling and murder, oh my – John announced he had a date.

“It’s where two people who like each other go out and have fun,” he explained.

Sherlock was perplexed.  “That’s what I was suggesting.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said John.  “At least I hope not.”

The words stung more than Sherlock might have expected.  Dropping his head, he shoved his bandaged hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out a flier.  The idea of taking _what’s-her-face_ to the cinema was neatly dispatched in favor of a Chinese circus.  Just as well – Sherlock needed John’s help. If that meant dragging some useless woman into the fray, so be it.

He was caught off-guard by John’s vehemence when he showed up to supervise their little tryst.  “I’m in the middle of a date! D’you want me to chase some killer while I’m trying to…” He trailed off, fuming.

“What?”

“While I’m trying to get off with Sarah!” John exclaimed.

This, of course, was precisely the moment what’s-her-face returned from the loo.  Sherlock turned and climbed up the stairs, feeling more than a little vindicated. Honestly, John’s priorities were all wrong.  He could be helping Sherlock catch a killer and all he wanted to do was shag some simpering ginger woman. Disgraceful.

The moment the circus performers danced into the ring, Sherlock knew they were Fae.  He craned his neck to see over John’s head. Aside from Su Lin, he had never seen Chinese fairies before; his experience was concentrated in the United Kingdom and Western Europe, with one memorable experience in Florida thrown in.

Musicians took up erhus, spinning out syrupy notes while others accompanied on drums.  Clad in gold and crimson, the fairy dancers whirled around the ring with unearthly grace.  They were lissome and fluid, but moved with a regimented order that reminded Sherlock of bees in the hive.  The crowd watched, mesmerized, as one dancer – a young woman – seemed to melt onto the floor, arms outstretched.  A man approached and clasped her hands, levering her effortlessly into a handstand above his head. She paused as if arrested by the crowd’s suspended breath, then jackknifed her legs toward her stomach, flipping artfully through her partner’s arms to somersault through the air.  She landed on her feet with effortless grace and bowed to the cheering onlookers.

As the show continued, Sherlock felt the gossamer threads of a glamor settling over the audience.  Slack and fine as silk, the magic tugged onlookers into a dreamy state of wonder, like a hand guiding a sleepwalker back to bed.  Lulled and amazed, the people were quicker to clap at the dancers and gasp at the feats of strength, the daring escapes.

Sherlock slipped off to investigate while John and what’s-her-face were busy being stupefied by parlor tricks.  The circus’ supplies were beyond an unmarked door – locked, but Sherlock made quick work of that. He found the spray bottle of paint amidst the glitz and clutter of silk and brocades.  And was promptly attacked by Zhi Zhu.

In the end, what’s-her-face – _Sarah_ – proved less useless than Sherlock had anticipated, bludgeoning a Fae acrobat with his own pole.  They escaped the bedlam and retreated to Baker Street.

John nipped into the kitchen to scrounge together what little food they had while Sherlock poured over his case notes.  Sarah hovered at his shoulder like an irksome moth with useless advice. When Sherlock’s fingers fumbled with the tab on an evidence bag, clumsy from the bandages, she pursed her lips.

“You should change those bandages,” she said.  “They’re looking a bit rank.”

“They’re fine.”

“Don’t be daft.”  She pulled a chair to Sherlock’s side and took his wrist between her slim hands.  Sherlock bore her ministrations, silently chanting at himself not to commit homicide.  John would be cross if Sherlock killed Sarah. Probably. Most likely.

His inner mantra was interrupted by Sarah’s baffled look.  “Why’ve you got bandages on? There’s no injury.”

Sherlock froze.  Then he drew his hand away from Sarah’s grasp, stared into his open palm.  The skin was smooth and soft, without even a hint of pink to attest to the slashes he had borne.  He flexed his fingers, the delicate network of muscle and tendon and bone moving without so much as a nibble of pain.

“How…”  His voice faded.

“Is… is this some kind of experiment?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” said Sherlock.  “I put filthy bandages on my hands for an _experiment._  Good God…”

He stood, breezing past the table to pace around the sitting room.  His hands were unhurt, pristine. As smooth and soft as the skin of a peach.

 _Peach tea._  Su Lin had been making it that night, before Zhi Zhu arrived.  When the bullets flew, obliterating the pots, the tabletop had been sluiced with tea.  Sticky and sweet in the creases of Sherlock’s bleeding palms.

Sherlock was dashing for the door before he remembered John.  “John!” he shouted toward the kitchen. “Su Lin’s tea!”

John emerged from the kitchen with a quizzical expression.  “What’s that?”

“Peaches!” Sherlock replied.  He whirled around and raced down the stairs before John could reply.

He was half-way to the A501 when common sense returned.  Pausing on the pavement, he gave up on hailing a taxi and lowered his arm.  John should be at his side. What sort of fool left their best warrior behind when battle loomed on the horizon?  Once John had another taste of action, he would forget all about Sarah. He was part redcap; to him, battle was like the music of a siren call.

Sherlock ran back to 221.  The knocker was askew. Nudging the door open, Sherlock stepped inside.  The foyer was clean but silent. Cautiously – feeling as though every step was a step through a minefield – he climbed the stairs to 221B.   Turned the doorknob with a sick twist of foreboding.

Chaos greeted him.  Chairs overturned, the boxes of Lukis’ and Van Coon’s books upended, spines broken and pages ripped.   Shards of glass glinted in the lamplight streaming through the sitting room window; Mrs. Hudson’s pitcher, smashed.  Orange slices were scattered around a stain of punch. Sherlock remembered the smell of Su Lin’s tea and felt his throat close.

There was no sign of John or Sarah.  The room seemed suspended on an indrawn breath: the pause before a scream.

_John._

-

Sherlock was not the second-cleverest man in London for nothing, but it did take him an embarrassing amount of time to sort out the kidnappers’ destination.  Every time he tried to fixate on the clues scattered about the ransacked flat, thoughts of John would crowd into his mind. _Where is he?  What would they do to him?  Why would they take him?_

After many crucial minutes, Sherlock was able to determine John’s— _their_ location.  He retrieved John’s Sig from the nightstand beside his bed.  For himself, Sherlock chose a fire iron – medieval, perhaps, but more dignified than a cast-iron skillet.

Later, creeping through the darkened tramway tunnel, Sherlock tensed as voices filtered through the shadows.  John’s Sig was a comforting weight in the pocket of his Belstaff. The fire iron cut a path through the darkness ahead of him, leading by the pointed end.  The burlap sack swayed in his other hand, its contents shifting and bumping against each other.

A withered voice rasped in the dark.  “…looking for a friend of yours, Mr. Holmes.”

“I’m not Sherlock Holmes!”  John, his words ragged with the same terror Sherlock had come to associate with his nightmares.  John, tearing himself out of a mist of gunfire and blood-clotted sand.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should, you know,” Sherlock called.  “Sherlock Holmes is nothing like him.”

Silence.  Then: the click of a pistol being cocked.  Sherlock raised the fire iron, brandished it like a blade.

“There’s no need for that,” he said.  “I have what you want, General Shan.”

Without awaiting a response, Sherlock stepped into the pool of light surrounding the general and her captives.  Two men flanked her, eyeing him with brutish contempt. Beside the general stood the crossbow she had used for the escapology act.  A makeshift lever stood above it, over which a pulley with a bag tied to one end hung. Sand streamed from a hole in the bag, whispering as the grains counted down the minutes.  On the other end of the rope, a weight descended with slow purpose toward the trigger.

Sarah sat several feet away, tied to a chair, eyes rooted on the bolt aimed for her heart.  Off to the side, John had been bound to his own chair. But for a smear of blood on his temple, he appeared unharmed.  His eyes flashed between Sherlock and the general, irritation in one glance and loathing in the other. The fist around Sherlock’s heart eased and he drew a steadying breath.  Lifted the sack.

“The peaches Su Lin stole,” he said.  He let the sack slip from his grip to thud softly against the floor, disgorging its contents onto the cobblestones.  “Take them and go.”

General Shan’s dark eyes lingered on the peaches before flicking up to meet Sherlock’s glare.  “Do you think I am a fool?”

“No,” said Sherlock.  “But for a fairy, I think you have a bloody good poker face.”

With that, he lifted one foot and brought it down on the nearest peach.  General Shan’s mouth fell open as the fruit squelched beneath his heel. Scraping the pulp off on the cobblestones, Sherlock looked at her with contempt.  “Well?”

One of Shan’s goons lunged at him.  Sherlock retreated into the shadows, neatly side-stepped the oncoming tackle, and whipped out the fire iron.  He found the nearest patch of exposed skin – the side of the goon’s neck – and pressed the flat of the iron there.  Screams reverberated up the iron and through Sherlock’s arm as the goon’s skin sizzled and curled. The damp air was choked with the stench of burning meat.  As his opponent collapsed, Sherlock withdrew the fire iron and brought the butt of John’s Sig down on his head, knocking him out.

“Who’s next?” he asked, in the same tone he might use to invite the Queen to tea.

He heard Shan snarl, _“Get him!”_

The second set of footsteps was quick and light, and Sherlock rushed forward.  He slashed out with the fire iron, but Zhi Zhu was quick, stealing under Sherlock’s guard and slipping a silk noose around his throat.  Sherlock was dragged to the ground with a hoarse cry. The fire iron rang as it struck the cobblestones, the sound echoing from the walls of the tunnel.  Zhi Zhu knelt above him, hands tightening the silk noose.

From the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw Shan fall to her knees, grasping at the remaining peaches.  A mad light had come into her eyes, rendering them glittering chips of onyx. In the dancing light of the fire, she was transformed: her fingernails lengthened into claws, her skin became bone-white.  Strips of fabric peeled away from her form and coiled around her hunched form like serpents. A howl erupted from her throat as her claws buried into the flesh of the fruits, making juice spurt and dribble to the cobbles.

Above Sherlock, Zhi Zhu stiffened with a gasp.  His hands slackened on the silk scarf and he pitched forward, the bolt from the crossbow protruding from his back.  Sherlock wheezed, each breath a scrape in his throat. With shaking hands, he shoved the Spider’s inert body off of him.  The fairy toppled to the ground. Dead.

Sherlock clambered upright and scanned the scene.  General Shan was gone, the remaining peaches gone with her.  Sarah was still bound to her chair, tears streaming down her face, her whimpers muffled by the gag.  The crossbow lay in a jumble of broken wood. Next to it, John was on his side, still bound but looking immensely relieved.

Sherlock stumbled to John’s side and stooped to struggle with the knots.  Tied tight, the twine dug red grooves into his wrists and ankles. John winced as they came loose.

“John,” said Sherlock, “John, are you okay?”

His thumb brushed the bracelet of raw skin on John’s wrist, and John sucked in a sharp breath.  His eyes – pupils wide and dark, ringed by ocean blue – met Sherlock’s.

And then he was levering himself upright and brushing past Sherlock to stagger across the cobblestones.  Sherlock turned, feeling strangely hollow. John made quick work of Sarah’s bonds and bent to croon apologies, assurances.  White noise. Sherlock’s hands dropped into his lap. His thumb brushed the top of his thigh.

Hours later – after Sarah had been tended to and gone home, after dealing with Lestrade’s questions and paperwork – Sherlock and John returned to 221B.  The morning sun was just breaking over London’s skyline, but they paid it no heed. The last fumes of Sherlock’s stamina had evaporated after days of pouring over books and chasing murderous fairies.  He mounted the last stair, opened the door, and tottered across the sitting room to collapse on the sofa.

John’s weight creaked on the upholstery beside him.  “Budge over.”

Grunting, Sherlock scooted a few inches.  John huffed his exasperation and squished in close, leaning against Sherlock like he was the world’s boniest pillow.  His voice was a warm mumble at Sherlock’s shoulder. “Madness.”

“Mm.”

“Sherlock.”

“Yes?”

“How did you know?  About the peaches, I mean.”

Sherlock leaned back against the sofa cushions.  “Prominent factor of Chinese mythology. Fruits – sometimes gems – that grant immortality.  Su Lin stole them hundreds of years ago, and the Tong have been searching for her ever since.”

“And she managed to keep them off her trail because…”  John yawned hugely, jaw creaking. “…because of her teapots.”

“Hmm, yes.  Protective talismans.”

“And the peaches you brought to the tramway tunnel were decoys?”

“No.”  Sherlock craned his neck.  From this vantage point, he could just make out John’s right wrist, the skin puckered and red.  “Su Lin had a garden on the top floor of her building. Cultivated the peaches for hundreds of years.  The first ones might have granted immortality, but they would go rotten like any other fruit.”

“Oh?” John mumbled, drowsy.  As if Sherlock’s words were a soothing bedtime story.

“What she didn’t understand,” said Sherlock, “is that the peaches would only grant immortality if grown in Faerie.  She grew them here, in the human world. She must have realized her mistake at some time or another, and started looking for ways to bring out the peaches’ power.  Hence the tea.”

“Christ.”  John rubbed one hand over his brow, blinking back sleep.  “It’s fantastic, really. All of it. You, especially.”

A warm flush rose to Sherlock’s face.  “Well. No deductive skills necessary there.  Just a basic grasp of Fae mythology.”

John peeled himself off of Sherlock.  His absence was like a cold slap of wind.  Shaking his head, he said, “How can you tell?  Which myths are real and which are just… just stories?”

“Well, that’s obvious,” said Sherlock.  “All the myths are stories. And they’re all true.”

 


	3. Her traces of the smallest spider’s web

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that I've changed the spelling from "fey" to "Fae." Apologies for the inconsistencies, but I'll stick to this one from here on out. 
> 
> My inspiration for the fairy lore in this fic comes from Skye Alexander's book "Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore."
> 
> Also, I am without a beta and the editing on this chapter is a bit slapdash. If you spot a typo (or want to beta some of my future work), please let me know.

 When Sherlock stepped out of 221 a few days later, he very nearly trod on a vagrant.

At least, he thought it was a vagrant.  With rumpled clothes and matted, dishwater blonde hair, the strands clinging to its grubby brow, it looked like it could be nothing else.  As Sherlock blinked down, puzzled, the vagrant lifted its head and looked at him with watery blue eyes. 

The realization struck and Sherlock reeled back on the balls of his feet.  A mazikeen – one with redcap blood.  _Another_ redcap.  Good God, he’d thought John could be the only one.  Mazikeen in general were not rare, but redcaps were.  Hundreds of years ago, people had been more preoccupied with killing redcaps than mating with them. 

The mazikeen cocked its head and said, in a distinctly female voice, “Hullo.”

“Er,” said Sherlock.

“Well, are you gonna invite me in or what?”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Sherlock.  “Are you staging an invasion?”

Rolling her eyes, the mazikeen climbed to her feet, swaying so precariously Sherlock feared she would topple off the stoop.   She gripped the doorframe for balance, blinking.  “Woo.  Spinning.”

“Who—”

The mazikeen interrupted him by detaching her hands from the doorframe and clapping them on Sherlock’s shoulders.  She was several inches shorter than him, and her grip forced him to hunch.  The beery stink of her breath wafted into his face.  “You must be the great Sherlock ‘Olmes!  Pleased to meetcha.”

Sherlock was just about to push the woman away or start shouting for John – or both – when a familiar voice floated through the doorway.  “Sherlock?  Who is that?”

Mrs. Hudson tottered to Sherlock’s side, still in her nightie and slippers, a steaming cuppa in one hand.  Her eyes widened at the spectacle lolling about on the stoop.  “Oh, hello.”  She glanced at Sherlock.  “Is she a friend of yours?  One of your… your homeless people?”

“No,” Sherlock said, trying to squirm out of the mazikeen’s grip. 

Mrs. Hudson blinked, unruffled.  “Well, then, who is she?”

“I haven’t the faintest—”

“Sherlock?  Mrs. Hudson?”

Sherlock heaved a sigh of relief.  _John._   If anyone could deliver him from this situation, it was John. “Down here,” he called, trying – failing – to quash the hint of hysteria in his voice. “We have a visitor.”

John’s steady gait descended the stairs, accompanied by his cheerful tone. A restful night, then – no nightmares to plague him, no blood or sand or the stink of gunpowder.  “A client?”

John emerged from the doorway and stopped at Mrs. Hudson’s side.  The smile playing about his mouth vanished.  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Sherlock understood, then, far too late.  _Oh.  Oh!_ Of course!  If John was a redcap mazikeen, it only made sense that—

The woman released Sherlock and turned on John with a beatific grin. “Johnny!  There you are.  I was wondering when you’d come ‘round.”

“I didn’t come ‘round,” John said.  _“You_ did.  Completely uninvited, I might add.”

“John?”  Mrs. Hudson looked fretful.  “Who is this?”

John glowered at the female mazikeen, who blinked blearily back.  “This is my sister, Harriet.”

“Harry,” said the mazikeen, smile unwavering.  She stuck out a hand, which Mrs. Hudson took after a moment’s hesitation. Harry pumped the old woman’s hand with near enough vigor to seesaw her into the doorframe.  “Pleasure, Mrs. H.  I’ve read all about you on Johnny’s diary.”

“It’s a blog,” John interjected.

“Whatever you say, baby brother,” said Harry.  Her gaze meandered back to Sherlock.  “I’ve got to say, Mr. ‘Olmes…”

“Sherlock,” said Sherlock.

“Don’t encourage her!” John hissed.

“…Sherlock,” said Harry, looking delighted, “you’re much more handsome in real life.  Not my type, ‘course, but I can see why Johnny likes you.”

John lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Jesus Christ.  Ignore her. She’s talking nonsense.”

“I,” said Harry, “am dead serious.”

She paused, her eyes going glassy.  The color drained from her face and her lips puckered around a moan. Sherlock scarcely had time to back away before Harry Watson bent double, shuddered, and vomited on the front steps of 221 Baker Street.

 

-

 

Sherlock was rather taken with Harry. 

“I am rather taken with your sister,” he informed John.  He lounged on the sofa with his violin clasped to his chest, fingers strumming out an idle tune.

John lowered his newspaper and glared at Sherlock over The Times’ account of the dull business in Birmingham – the one with the stockbrokers.  Sherlock had solved that case in a trice, and the entire nation was going barmy for it.  Luckily, he’d passed the glory off on some promising but browbeaten officer. For him, a famous name would be more hindrance than help. 

“Don’t be,” said John.  “She’s an addict.  She knows how to charm people.”

Sherlock was affronted.  “I’m not _‘people.’_ ”

The Times rustled as John raised it again with a noncommittal grunt.  “No, you really aren’t.”

Sherlock wouldn’t let the matter drop.  “She vomited on the stoop.”

“Yes, I’m aware.  I was there.”

“It almost got on my shoes, John.”

“I _know,_ Sherlock.”

“I think your sister may be slightly mad.”

The pages of The Times shook as John chuckled.  There was something off-key about the sound, like a leader in an orchestra who had neglected to tune his violin.  John’s left hand trembled as he folded the paper and set it on the arm of his chair with a wince. “Well, at least you and I can agree on that.”

Sherlock went back to plucking away at his violin while John puttered about the flat, tidying the mess Harry had made when she blew through with the reeling chaos of a whirlwind.  The dishtowel she’d snatched off the oven to mop spit and bile from her mouth, before promptly tossing it to the floor.  A cuppa gone cold, abandoned after one sip and a grimace.  A saucer laden with crumbs.

“I’m really feeling much better,” Harry had said, scarfing down her third biscuit to punctuate the statement.  “Got the last of it out.”

“On our front step,” John had said. 

Harry had shrugged, unrepentant.  “Better out the front than the back.  You wouldn’t’ve wanted to deal with that, would you?”

With a blue streak that surprised even Sherlock, John had packed his sister off to the loo for a wash.  Once she was slightly more presentable, he ushered her down the stairs and out of the flat. Sherlock watched from the landing as John threw open the front door and dragged Harry outside.  As they vanished beyond the doorway, Harry had craned her neck and shot Sherlock a cheeky grin. 

John had returned an hour later, his temper frayed.  He had not replied to Sherlock’s request for tea, but had trundled to his armchair, swiping the latest edition of The Times off the table as he went. 

Sherlock’s fingers stilled on the strings.  A question rose to the forefront of his mind:  was John aware of his redcap ancestry?  Was Harry?  Neither had any physical traits to reveal their status.  Without his second sight, Sherlock would never have guessed it. 

“John?” he asked. 

John paused with his hand cupped on the seat of the sofa, ready to sweep away Harry’s stray crumbs.  “What?”

“Would you be amenable to giving me one of Harry’s teeth?”

A pause.  Then: _“What?”_

“I could extract it myself.  I’m quite handy with pliers.”  Sherlock left it unsaid that, if Harry’s teeth had the long redcap roots he anticipated, they would be a trial to pull.  No matter.  John probably wouldn’t mind if Harry had a sore jaw.

“Um,” said John, fighting a smile, “no.  You can’t have Harry’s teeth.”

Sherlock pouted.  “I don’t want _teeth,_ plural.  I would be happy with one.”

“Still no, sorry.  Why d’you want teeth, anyway?  Some kind of experiment?”

Sherlock shrugged, evasive.  “Possibly.”

“That’s mad, you know.”  John shook his head, but one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.  For an instant, he looked younger – almost mischievous. Sherlock had an impression of John as a boy, all skinned knees and tousled hair and wild abandon.  Then John set his jaw and the smile vanished.  He scooped the crumbs into his open palm and rose to his feet.  “Besides, Harry’s teeth would be no good.  Probably eroded from all the drink and bile.”

He said those last three words with a bitter tang, like they were a foul taste he couldn’t scrub from his mouth.  Still clutching the violin to his chest, Sherlock sat up, his legs slipping off the sofa.  The floor was cool against his bare feet.

“Harry is a drinker,” he said.

John averted his gaze to his open palm.  Crossing to the bin beside the fireplace, he upturned his hand and wiped off the crumbs.  “Thought that was fairly obvious, yeah.”

“And you’re an adrenaline junkie.”

John tensed for an instant, then nodded.  “I suppose so.”

Sherlock studied him, piecing together the facts.  Redcaps had been notoriously violent creatures by necessity. If they neglected to kill and dye their cap in the blood of their victims, they eventually grew feeble and died. Was it so improbable that redcap mazikeen would have similar afflictions?  That their addictions would not only poison them, but sustain them as well?

It made a horrible kind of sense, Sherlock thought.  After killing Hope, John seemed much more alivethan the pitiful man who had limped into Bart’s Laboratory with Stamford.  Quicker to act, sharper in his speech and manner.  John was far from mentally well _,_ but he was no longer the man intent on limping out of his own life. 

 _I did that,_ thought Sherlock. 

“Any other addictions I should be aware of?” he asked.

John blinked, all expression wiped from his face.  He turned and regarded Sherlock with a flat, remote look. “What.”

“Aside from the drinking and danger, I mean.  Clearly it’s a family trait.”

“That’s funny,” said John.  “You’re funny, aren’t you?  You’re not exactly qualified to lecture me on addiction.”

“I certainly won’t claim to be innocent,” said Sherlock, adopting a lofty tone.  “But at least I control my usage.  That’s a fair sight better than you or your sister.”

“That’s enough,” John snapped.  Without waiting for Sherlock’s response, he stood and stalked toward the doorway, yanking his jacket from its hook in a single, fierce motion.  “I’m going out.”

“No need to throw a tantrum,” said Sherlock.

John uttered a harsh laugh.  “Bit rich, coming from you.”

“Give Sarah my love,” Sherlock retorted, determined to have the last word.

He needn’t have bothered.  The door slammed shut, followed by John’s tread down the stairs.  Peevish, Sherlock unfolded into a stand, loped over to the table by the windows, and picked up his bow.  He dragged the window open and serenaded John’s retreat down the pavement with a screeching rendition of _Danny Boy._ The mazikeen stormed down the street, rounded a corner, and disappeared.  Sherlock set his violin and bow on the table and slammed the window shut with all the vehemence he could muster.  It wasn’t remotely as satisfying as he had hoped. 

For the next hour or so, Sherlock tramped around the flat, impotent rage fizzling in his veins.  Stupid, _stupid!_ What had possessed him to pry into John’s personal affairs?  John was interesting by virtue of being a mazikeen, as well as a doctor and soldier.  Whatever vices he suffered were none of Sherlock’s concern.  In fact, if he hadn’t encouraged John’s penchant for danger, Sherlock would have been dead by now.  Dead twice over, thrice over.

Fuming, Sherlock stalked up to John’s room.  The door was locked, but such things were child’s play to Sherlock’s nimble fingers.  The bolt slid free and he turned the knob, pushed the door open with a creak.  A beam of light from the corridor pooled on the floor, illuminating John’s room:  Spartan, but clean.  Sherlock crossed to the bed and considered the old, lumpy mattress.  Envisioned John, curled and compact, in the dent at the center of the bed, turned on his side to face the door.  John would never let himself be caught unawares. 

For a moment, Sherlock was tempted to get on the bed, burrow underneath the blankets.  See if he could find John’s scent:  unwashed, concentrated.  An animal musk.

He blinked, disoriented.  _Ridiculous._

Sherlock unearthed John’s Sig from the depths of a nightstand drawer.  He looked through the second drawer for good measure, wrinkling his nose at the pitiful display of _normalcy_ within: packets of condoms, a half-empty bottle of lube, a roll of deodorant.  A bottle of melatonin tablets.  Glancing at the bottle and popping open the top, Sherlock estimated John had used roughly half the tablets.  Trying to coax himself to sleep, trying to stave off the nightmares with dietary supplements. 

Sherlock sniffed and tossed the bottle back in the drawer, shutting it with a rattle.  John might have _Sarah_ now, but nightmares were still his closest bedfellows.  His cries were always muffled, but Sherlock heard them. 

He flounced back down the stairs and found himself face-to-face with the yellow smiley painted on the far wall of the sitting room.  Scowling, he raised the Sig, cocked it, and fired once, twice. Again.  Again.  Again. When he lowered the gun, five smoking bullet holes were stamped into the wall: two in the smiley’s eyes, three along its mouth. 

And then:  a sixth bang, but this sound was full of rumbling and roiling, thunderclouds scudding across an open plain.  It ripped through the flat, ripped through Sherlock’s ears on a blast of heat that hurled him to the ground.  Smoke billowed and dust clogged his mouth, his throat, as he gasped and cried out. He lay face-down on the floor. Gagging on grit, blind with tears, he reached out and planted one hand against the floor.  Pain lanced through his palm.  Echoes of the slashes left by Su Lin’s shattered pots.   

Sherlock turned his head and wiped his eyes as best he could against his shoulder. His palm stung, sticky with blood. He rolled onto his back with a groan and a tinkle of glass.  _The windows._   The blast had blown in the windows, leaving a glittering down of shards and slivers in its wake. 

Wincing, Sherlock climbed to his feet and staggered toward the gaping holes in the wall.  A warm breeze fanned across his face, bringing with it the stench of char and gas. Outside, the few remaining streetlamps transformed the clouds of dust into a gauzy shroud. 

Sherlock turned his head for a better vantage point and stopped as something in his peripheral vision registered as _wrong._   Through the haze of tears and grit, he looked at the building on the other side of the street.

Or, rather, failed to look at it.

Because it had been blown up.

 

-

 

Hours later, as the NSY swarmed the area and the fire brigade finished their work, Mycroft swanned in and plopped down in John’s chair like he had every right to it. 

Sherlock, seated in his own armchair and plucking at the violin, glared at him.  “Get out.”

“I’m afraid I cannot be so accommodating,” said Mycroft.  He sat ramrod-straight in John’s chair, ankles crossed and elbows propped on the plush arms.  “We have to talk, little brother.”

Mycroft blathered on about something or other when footsteps in the stairwell sounded, preceding John’s voice.  “Sherlock.  Sherlock!” He appeared in the doorway, eyes frantic. 

“John,” said Sherlock.

John crossed the room.  As he drew near, Mycroft twisted around to rake the mazikeen with an assessing eye. John ignored him.  “I saw it on the telly.  Are you okay?”

“Hmm?  What? Oh.”  Sherlock swept his gaze over the scattered glass and debris, as if he had forgotten it.  “Yes, fine. Gas leak, apparently.”

“Sherlock,” said Mycroft, “this… situation is of national importance.”

“I simply can’t,” said Sherlock.  The violin twanged as if in agreement.  “The case I’ve got on is just too big.  Sorry.”

Sherlock watched Mycroft exercise enormous control not to roll his eyes.  It was probably the most exercise his brother had done in years.  Clasping his hands in his lap and pursing his lips, Mycroft said, “Never mind your usual trivia.  This is about the Glamour Laws, Sherlock.”

Sherlock stilled.  With a few barbed words, Mycroft could expose Sherlock as one of the Liminal Children. He didn’t know how he felt about John knowing, though he _was_ certain that if his past was revealed, he wanted it done on his own terms.  “Oh?”

Mycroft smirked, sensing his tacit victory.  “Do I have your full attention?”

“Stop gloating and get on with it.”

“Of course.”  Mycroft picked a speck off his trouser leg.  “The M.O.D.’s Fae division is working on new glamour-penetrating equipment and iron-based defenses.  The Bruce-Partington plans.  Preventative measures.”

“Anti-Fae warfare, you mean,” said John. 

Mycroft shot John a chilling look, but John only blinked.  “Am I wrong?”

“Preventative measures _only,”_ said Mycroft.

“Sure.”  John didn’t look convinced.  “Go on, then.”

Mycroft’s expression darkened; he wasn’t accustomed to being granted permission, and he didn’t like it.  Sherlock exchanged a grin with John as his brother continued.  “One of the workers had a copy of the plan.  He was found dead this morning on the Battersea Station tracks.  His head was smashed in.”

“Oh,” said John.

“Quite.”  Mycroft slid his gaze to Sherlock.  “We need those plans restored.  If they get into the wrong hands, the Queen—”

“I do have other things on right now,” said Sherlock, gesturing around the flat. “My home’s just been blown up.”

“Spare me the theatrics,” said Mycroft.  “The building across the street was blown up, with not a casualty to speak of. Rather fortunate, don’t you think? Neat and tidy.  Almost like it was arranged _.”_

“Ye-es,” drawled Sherlock.  “It’s a message for me.  And whoever sent that message is far more interesting than your little government trifles.”

“Why don’t you deal with it, Mycroft?” asked John.  “You’ve got to have a notion of where the plans are, at least.”

“I,” said Mycroft, “am not remotely interested in legwork.”

“Obviously, John,” Sherlock added.

“Anyway,” said Mycroft, “I thought Sherlock would be interested in the matter, seeing as he has a personal connection to the Fae.”

Sherlock stiffened, fingers curling tightly around the violin.  _Damn you, Mycroft._   He glanced at John and saw that he had gone quite still, hands balled into fists at his sides.  A smug smile played around Mycroft’s lips as he watched Sherlock, letting the tension in the room stretch, as thick and slow as taffy. 

“Fine,” Sherlock snapped.  “Since you’re too lazy to do it yourself, I’ll take your idiotic case.  Now get out before I start contemplating fratricide.”

Smiling magnanimously, Mycroft rose from John’s chair and glided out of the flat with all the pomp of a parade float.  Sherlock scowled at his brother’s retreating form as he descended the stairs and drifted out of sight. 

“Your brother is a twat,” said John.

Sherlock stood and went to the window, where he watched Mycroft slip into a black, unmarked car.  As the vehicle coasted down the street, he said, “Perhaps we could trade siblings.”

A moment of silence – a moment of wondering if he had slipped up again – and then John laughed.  “Ta, but no. I’ll sort out the mess I know.”

Sherlock snorted, infected by John’s laughter.  It wasn’t the same madness that had tipped them into hysterics in the stairwell, that first night.  It wasn’t a shadow of that night.  But it was better than the chill that had frosted over the flat the night before.  When John had left, he had sucked all the warmth out of 221B with him. 

The shrill ring of his mobile startled Sherlock, and he tore his gaze away from John, realizing that he had been staring – and John had been staring back. Setting his jaw, Sherlock took out his mobile.  The generic icon of an anonymous caller lit the screen. 

“Sherlock Holmes,” he said by way of greeting. 

The voice on the other end of the line was totally devoid of emotion.  “Hello, sexy.  Are you ready to play the game?”

 

-

 

Lucy, Westie’s fiancée, was clearly a selkie.  A mazikeen, yes, but half-blooded.  The genetic quirk of selkies gave female offspring all the traits of selkies and male offspring none.  Born with their own seal coat – the logistics of which were as mythical as the Fae themselves – women descended from full-blooded selkies could opt to live on land or sea, without the compulsion to belong to either.

Sherlock didn’t need his second sight to identify Lucy.  She had all the traits of a full-blooded selkie:  liquid dark eyes, icecap-silver hair twined into a neat plait, and the generous curves so coveted by fishermen of old.  Only her red eyes attested to her sorrow.  She did not utter a word, but pushed the door open and gestured for Sherlock and John to come inside.

The flat in Putney was small but immaculate.  With the floors scrubbed to a fine sheen, the carpets hoovered, and the windows sparkling, every aspect of the flat reflected on its expert homemaker. As they walked through the kitchen, Sherlock swiped a forefinger over the windowsill over the sink.  The pad of his finger came away clean.

“You do all of this,” he said. 

Lucy paused in leading them through the kitchen and turned on Sherlock with a perplexed look.  When he swept a hand around the room, she nodded.  She didn’t need to use words; the look on her face was eloquent enough.  _Of course I do.  That’s what a good wife does, isn’t it?  And I was to be his wife._

“Sherlock?” asked John. 

“Where is your coat?” asked Sherlock.  Lucy’s eyes widened.  “I know you’re a selkie.  Did Westie steal your coat?  Is that why you were going to marry him?”

“Oh,” said John, fighting not to cringe as the weight of the situation fell upon him.  Sherlock made no such effort.  Selkies and their daughters had been the subjects of marital abuse for years.  If someone stole their coat, they could no longer take seal form and return to the sea.  They were forced into a life of servitude, of bearing their captor’s children and keeping his home.  Only when they found their coat could they flee, and their abusers were careful not to let that happen. 

Many selkies – Lucy among them, evidently – were rendered mute by the loss of their coat.  As if their voice had been ripped away with their freedom.

“If you were forced against your will, I can search for your coat,” Sherlock told Lucy.  “We can deal with Westie’s death after you’ve gone home—find an explanation that doesn’t lead back to you.”

Lucy shook her head, blonde-silver strands of hair coming undone from the plait. Her jaw clenched, her eyes scrunched shut.  Tears slid down her cheeks.  _No, no, no…_

“Sherlock,” said John.

“You can’t want to be here,” Sherlock said.  “It was rash to kill him before you knew where your coat was, but I can help you—”

With a stifled sob, Lucy turned on her heel and bolted from the kitchen.  As the sound of her footsteps retreated into the sitting room, John looked at Sherlock.  “You shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s the truth,” Sherlock said.  “Selkie stories are all the same.  Kidnapping, rape, abuse.  Obviously she got tired of it and killed him.  Tedious.”

For an instant, John looked like he had been slapped.  Then the shock was wiped away by a wave of anger.  “Shut up.”

“I could be looking for a _bomber,_ John.  Instead, I’m poking around in Mycroft’s government rubbish bin because he couldn’t be bothered to get off his fat arse and do it himself.  Westie was a thief.  He stole Lucy’s coat, stole the Bruce-Partington plans, and got his head smashed in for his troubles.”

“You don’t know that,” John snapped.  “’Mistake to theorize without all the data,’ wasn’t that it?  Besides, it’s obvious that Lucy loved him.”

 _“How?”_ Sherlock demanded.  “How can you know that?  She didn’t utter a word!”

The look John gave Sherlock was speculative.  Like Sherlock was an automaton masquerading as a man, and John had just seen through the skin to the cold metal beneath.  

“Just…”  John took a step back, shook his head.  “Just let me talk to her.  Alone.”

“Be my guest,” said Sherlock.  “I’m sure you’ll ferret out whatever she’s hiding.  You’re _such_ a genius, after all.”

John looked momentarily crestfallen.  He scratched his brow, sighing.  “Don’t see why you have to be so…” 

He left the sentiment unfinished and turned to follow Lucy into the sitting room.  Sherlock remained in the kitchen, vibrating with a noxious, twisting energy.  He crept to the doorway and stood by the wall, out of sight but not out of earshot. 

“…sorry about all that.”  John’s voice. Low, murmuring.  Comfort threaded through each syllable like sutures in flesh: a sting, a balm.  Healing. 

Lucy sniffled in response.  John said, “You and Westie must have had some form of communication in case something like this happened, yeah?  Did you use hand gestures?  BSL?”  A pause.  “Perfect.  I’m a bit rusty, but let’s see…”

The silence that followed yawned wide, filled by a language Sherlock could not see.  He was tempted to look beyond the doorway, but to do so would put him directly in Lucy or John’s line of sight, and then John’s questioning would end. 

“Sherlock?” John called, surprising him.  “You can come in, now.  Lucy says it’s all right.”

Gritting his teeth – hating that he felt guilty, that he needed _permission_ – Sherlock rounded the corner and walked into the sitting room.  He walked to the end of the sofa and stood, awkward but defiant.  Without looking at him, Lucy raised her hands and performed a series of gestures, fluid and quick. 

John furrowed his brow with concentration.  “She says she didn’t kill Westie.  She says she loves… loved him.”

Sherlock hummed a noncommittal reply.  He didn’t know if he trusted Lucy at her figurative word, but if she was telling the truth, Westie’s case might prove more interesting than he had thought. 

Lucy’s hands moved, and John translated with laborious care.  “She says… hang on, can you repeat that? Right, thanks… She says her coat went missing right before Westie disappeared, but he wouldn’t have taken it.”

“Who else knew where you kept your coat?” asked Sherlock.

Lucy shook her head.  Sherlock needed no translation.  _No-one._

Lucy could offer nothing else.  As Sherlock and John left the flat, they were passed by a young man with a bicycle, tall and lean and surly. 

“Who’re you, then?” he asked, eyes flicking from them to the doorway of Lucy’s flat. 

John bristled, and Sherlock strode forward, extending a hand.  “Sherlock Holmes.  Consulting detective.”

The young man stared at his hand with suspicion, then took it in a brief, firm shake.  “You’re with the coppers?”

“No.  I work with them on occasion, but I am my own entity.”

The young man scoffed.  “Just as well.  Bloody useless, the lot of them.”

“You’re a mazikeen,” Sherlock noted, and the man’s eyes widened. “Half-selkie.  Come to check on your sister, have you?”

“’Course,” the young man said.  After giving Sherlock an assessing look, he said, “Name’s Joe.”

“Any idea where her coat’s gone?” John interjected.

Joe’s eyes narrowed.  “Dunno. It went missing right before Westie did.”

“I only ask because she’s clearly mute, and by my judgement, she hasn’t eaten in a few days,” said John.  “You must have known where she kept it.  You’re her brother, after all.”

Joe stiffened.  “What’re you implying?”

“Nothing,” said Sherlock, cutting John short.  “He meant nothing by it.  We’ll be in touch.  Come on, John.”

Gripping John’s sleeve, Sherlock lead him down the pavement.  John went, albeit grudgingly, scowling at Joe’s back. They were a few buildings away when he jerked his arm, disentangling himself from Sherlock’s hold. 

“I can walk on my own, thanks,” John groused.

“You think Joe took the coat,” said Sherlock.  “Why?”

John averted his eyes with a huff.  “I don’t know.  Just a feeling, I suppose.”

“’A feeling’ isn’t enough.”

“I know.”

“My work is based on hard science – facts, irrefutable.  You can’t simply romanticize—”

“I _know,_ Sherlock!” John snapped. “Jesus.  Just.  Leave it, will you?”

They hailed a cab to take them back to Baker Street.  John said nothingthroughout the ride, staring out the window with a distant expression.  Sherlock stole glances every few minutes, tempted to break the hush, but he had no notion of what to say.  He didn’t know why he felt compelled to talk at all.  The noxious, twisting feeling had only intensified: a congealing sludge of guilt and anger and so much more.  It pushed words into Sherlock’s mouth, perched them on his tongue.  _I’m sorry._  

Sherlock bit back the words.  If John wanted to cry for all the poor selkie women in the world, that was his business. As long as it didn’t affect the Work, it made no difference. 

 _I’m sorry,_ he thought, and clamped his teeth down tight. 

 

-

 

Cloistered away in Bart’s lab, Sherlock turned his attention back to the bomber’s game.  John hovered at his side.  The mazikeen all but vibrated with tense energy, preoccupied with Lucy’s plight and nervous about the ensorcelled woman in the car. 

“Try and remember there’s a woman here who might die.”

“What for?  This hospital is full of people dying, Doctor.  Why don’t you go cry by their bedsides and see what good it does them?”

John looked away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. 

Molly came to visit.  She brought her latest boyfriend along – a small, simpering Irishman by the name of Jim. At Molly’s repeated attempts to start a conversation, Sherlock rolled his eyes and pulled his gaze away from the microscope.  He looked at Jim – _really_ looked, letting his mind construct facts from the clues.  Hair product, clubber’s eyes, designer pants. Utterly ordinary.

“Gay,” he pronounced. 

“Oh, um, hey,” he later amended. 

Molly lingered in the lab after Jim had gone, prefacing his departure with a chaste peck on the cheek.  Sherlock had turned his attention back to the microscope, but he felt her stare settle on him like a physical weight. 

“You never really see, do you?” Molly asked.

“I see everything,” said Sherlock. 

“No,” said Molly, “you really don’t.”

 

-

 

The bomber – who Sherlock was certain had been the fairy who ensorcelled Jefferson Hope – had picked a new plaything.  A fickle puppeteer, it dropped one marionette the moment it grew bored and picked up another.  Manipulating the strings without a care for broken bodies and fractured minds. 

“Carl laughed at me, so I stopped him laughing,” it said.  A young man’s voice, this time.  The only similarity between the two puppets was the blank, lifeless tone it used. 

Sherlock strained his ears to hear the rush of sound undercutting the puppet’s words: bustling footsteps, a fog of voices.  “What’s that noise?”

“The sounds of life, Sherlock,” said the puppet.  “Isn’t it all so very tedious?  So _filthy?_   Like maggots swarming a corpse.  All I have to do is lift my foot and – _splat!”_   The word shook through Sherlock like a blow.  “You’re different,” the puppet continued.  “You’re special.”

“What do you want?” Sherlock asked.

“I’m looking for something,” said the puppet.  “A lost toy.  You wouldn’t have happened upon it, would you?”

“You don’t seem very devoted to your search.”

“Hmm, no, suppose not,” drawled the puppet.  “I’m having so much fun.  But I’ll find it eventually.  I’m close.” A ragged, nasal inhale whistled down the line.  A predator scenting the air.  “I can almost _smell it.”_

 

-

 

Sherlock won the Ian Monkford game, but he had little time to revel in his victory.

“This one is a bit… defective,” said the latest puppet – an old woman, her voice rasping and frail.  “She’s blind. Do you know… Sherlock?  I like to play with… my toys.  But I tend to play a little… too… roughly.  They always break, in the… end.”

“Why are you doing this?” Sherlock asked.

“I like… to watch you… dance,” said the puppet.  “Maybe… one day soon… I’ll play with you.”

 

-

 

The Connie Prince game ended in a tie.  Sherlock won the game and lost the puppet, along with eleven other people in her building when it the bomb ripped it apart.  The old woman’s voice festered like a wound in Sherlock’s memory, refusing to be cut out and cauterized. 

_“So… soft.”_

“I’ve disappointed you,” said Sherlock.

John rounded on him, his accusing glare half-masked by a sarcastic smile.  “That’s good.  That’s a good deduction, yeah.”

“Don’t make people into heroes, John. Heroes don’t exist, and if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.”

 

-

 

Alex Woodbridge.  The Golem (surprisingly a human, though without his second sight, Sherlock would have mistaken him for some kind of fairy).  The Vermeer painting.  The child’s voice, counting down from ten.

Sherlock won all the puppeteer’s games.  He all but buzzed with the thrill of victory when he leaned toward Ms. Wenceslas and asked if the whispers had a name.

She confessed in a low tone, as if certain the puppeteer would hear her. “Moriarty.”

 

-

 

“Where are we?” asked John.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t I say?  Joe Harrison’s flat.”

John glanced around the empty flat, the tension of their break-in honing into cold, clear purpose.  The shift from confused man into predatory redcap was captivating, like watching a lion sunning itself on a rock, only to rise and stretch, tongue lolling, before it pounced. 

They didn’t have to wait long.  Joe arrived minutes later, huffing with exertion from the bike ride.  John strode down the hallway with murder in his eyes; the instant Joe saw him, he took a step back with a sharp, indrawn breath. He lunged for the bike, but stopped when John raised his gun.  “Don’t. I promise I won’t hesitate.”

Joe might have murdered Westie, but he was a coward at his core.  He raised his hands for mercy, allowed himself to be ushered into the sitting room, and told the entire story without a shred of belligerence.

“Where is the memory stick?” asked Sherlock.

Joe shook his head and leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. “I… I destroyed it.”

“And somehow, I don’t believe the Bruce-Partington plans are gone.”

Joe flicked a wary glance at John.  If he had been contemplating a lie, the hard look in John’s eyes extinguished that urge; he swallowed and said, “No.  They aren’t.”

“Where are they.”  Not a question, but a command.

“I… I was told t-to transcribe them,” said Joe. 

 _“Where,”_ John growled.

Joe flinched.  “He said… he said it had to be a Fae material.  That if I did it, I’d get a cut of the Vermeer painting payoff.  He said it was a part of the game…”

John looked at Sherlock.  “Lucy’s coat.”

“Indeed, John,” said Sherlock.  “Lucy’s coat.”

John rounded on Joe with a ferocity that made the other man cringe.  “How could you do that?  She’s your sister!”

“Sh-she’s…”  Joe trailed off, shaking.  Found a scrap of resentment to spit out the words, “She’s just like Mum!  She c-can’t function without that coat.  It’s _pathetic._   Westie shouldn’t have bothered with a mongrel like her—”

His words dissolved in a yelp as John strode toward him, one arm slung back in preparation for a strike.  Sherlock swept to John’s side and gripped his wrist, arresting his progress with no small effort. 

“Don’t, John,” he hissed. 

“Let me go,” John snarled.

“John,” said Sherlock, “Lestrade and the Yard are on their way.  Let them deal with Joe.  If you lay a hand on him, you’ll bring trouble on yourself at best. At worst…”  He let the word hang in the air, sparing Joe a contemptuous look. “…you will give him ammunition. Don’t let him slither out of this, John.”

John glared at Joe for a moment longer, then relented, the strength leaving his arm.  Fury billowed off him like heat waves on sun-blasted pavement.  Shrugging off Sherlock’s hand, John strode toward the door.  He paused on the threshold and regarded Joe with a steely look.

“You took away your sister’s freedom,” he said.  “You are the most disgusting kind of human being imaginable, and if I had my druthers, you would be dead now.”

With that pronouncement – stripped of anger, but with the complete conviction of a God casting down an unworthy supplicant – John left the room.

 

-

 

“I won’t be in for tea,” said John.  He pulled his coat from its hook and shrugged his arms into the sleeves. “Going to see Sarah.  There’s some of that risotto left in the fridge.”

Sherlock dragged his gaze from the telly, frowning as John made his way to the door.  “You aren’t going to see Sarah.  Your posture is too tense and you’ve been scowling at your phone all evening.” 

John heaved a sigh, wearing a scowl identical to the one Sherlock had just mentioned.  “Leave it.”

“Where are you going?  Who are you seeing?” Sherlock asked, mostly to himself.  John’s left hand curled into a fist at his side.  “Ah.”

“Don’t,” John warned.

“You’re going to see Harry,” said Sherlock.  “Why?  You made it quite clear you have no interest in associating with her.  Unless…”  He paused, waiting as more clues came to light.  Shadows under John’s eyes: sleepless nights.  Red crescents on his left palm: constant stress, repeatedly curling his hand into a fist.  The empty glass beside his laptop, filmed with the dregs of scotch.  Two fingers: bracing himself.

“You’re going to try to convince her to stop,” said Sherlock.

“I said to leave it,” said John.

“I don’t see why you bother.  She’s clearly not going to stop.  Her addiction is just as much a part of her as battle is a part of you.  Neither of you can help it—”

“Shut up.”

“—it’s just how you’re made.”

The fist at John’s side tightened, knuckles whitening.  Rage stiffened his spine.  He teetered on the edge of an explosion, overbalanced – and then stepped back, shaking his head.  With a dismissive huff, he stormed out the door and slammed it shut behind him.  His footsteps faded down the stairwell. There and gone.

Sherlock unfolded from his armchair and went to the window, peering into the night as John strode down the street.  Anger rendered his gait menacing – he was again the lion, pacing across the plains.  Melting into the blackness, lost to sight.

Sherlock went to John’s open laptop and began to type.  _Determined location of the Bruce-Partington plans._

_The pool.  Midnight._

-

 

 The slosh of water lapping against tiles.  The stink of chlorine, scouring and astringent. 

And John walking into the light.  He stared at Sherlock, eyes blank, his voice devoid of inflection.  “This is a turn-up, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

Sherlock stood frozen in place.  His pulse thumped in his throat.  “John.  What…?”

“Bet you never saw this coming.”

John reached into his pocket, withdrew something long and sharp, gleaming in the fluorescent lights dancing off the surface of the water.  A blade – not an ordinary kitchen knife but a medieval thing, wickedly curved and honed to an edge that could split hairs.  Hands steady, John raised the blade and placed the tip under his ear, at the soft hinge of his jaw. 

“I found the lost toy,” he said—no.  The _puppeteer_ said. 

Terror washed over Sherlock as understanding dawned.  It welled in his voice, bubbled out in a quaver. “Stop.  Stop this now.”

“He’s quite special, you know,” said the puppeteer.  “You don’t find many redcap mongrels wandering about.  So special, and yet…”  John’s hand moved, infinitesimally, and the point of the blade sunk into the pale flesh at his jaw.  A bead of blood welled, streamed in a rivulet down his neck.  The collar of his shirt darkened to crimson.  “So… fragile.”

“Tell me what you want,” said Sherlock.  His eyes were rooted on the stark line of blood. 

John’s hand stilled.  “I want you to play the game, Sherlock.  Will you play with me?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock quickly.  “Yes, I’ll play whatever you like.  Now let John go.”

A laugh – not from John, but from a far-off corner of the pool.  High, melodic.  A Fae laugh.  The figure appeared, shadows peeling away from his suit-clad form with the slow, sticky cling of molasses.  A length of soft, pearlescent cloth hung over one of his arms.  Moriarty.  _Jim,_ Molly’s silly, simpering boyfriend.

Jim, who Sherlock had been certain was an ordinary human.

Sherlock stared at the small man, deductions rising and crumbling in his mind with dizzying speed.  This was no clean snap of puzzle pieces into a picture; this was the jagged edges of a shattered mirror slicing into his fingers as he tried to fit the shards back together.  His lips moved, but no sound emerged.  Shock had robbed him of his voice.

“Jim Moriarty,” he said, and waved. “Hi.”

“You…”  Sherlock trailed off.  Tried again. “You’re Fae.”

“Yep,” said Moriarty, popping the ‘p.’

“But I couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t see me?” asked Moriarty.  A pitying smile twisted his mouth and he _tsked._ “Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock.  Don’t you know?  Nobody’s perfect, my sweet.  You might come close, but…”  He shrugged. “We all fall short of that glorious standard, now don’t we?  Best not dwell on it.”

“You… but _why?”_

“’Why’ what?” asked Moriarty.  “Why did I ensorcell all those people?  Why did I blast that old crone to smithereens?  Why did I bother with all those silly little trifles?  The _jobs?”_   He uttered the last word with a contempt that suggested he scarce thought them worth the title.  The fingers of his free hand drifted to his arm, stroking the downy white fabric.  “I was bored, and Mother let me play a game.”

Sherlock blinked.  “’Mother?’”

“Even fairies have them,” said Moriarty.  “Do you know, Lucy had a mother too!  A selkie mum.”  His hand fisted in the fabric, lifted it for Sherlock’s inspection.  This was a deduction that made sense:  Lucy’s coat.  The coat she needed to reclaim her voice, to find her freedom. 

“Joe gave it to me,” Moriarty explained.  “Well, I should say ‘sold,’ but you understand.  Semantics.”  He rolled his eyes.  “He hates his mongrel sister, you know.  Hated their mum, too.  Selkies are such _weak_ creatures.  You can only pity someone for so long before you start to despise them.”

Sherlock swallowed and strove for a calm tone.  “You don’t have any use for it.”

“No,” said Moriarty, eyeing the coat.  “I really don’t.  I once took a selkie’s coat.  Long time ago.  I tore it into shreds in front of her, just to see what would happen.  D’you know what she did?”

Sherlock said nothing.  He flicked his eyes to John: no response, no flicker of emotion.  John had so wanted to return Lucy’s coat to her.

“She screamed,” said Moriarty.  Sherlock’s attention flew back to the smaller man as he lifted the coat high, bringing his hands together at the middle.  “She screamed like she was dying in agony.  Such a _lovely_ sound.”

With a sudden yank that spoke of inhuman strength, Moriarty rent the coat down the middle.  Sherlock flinched, feeling as if something inside him had been torn away.  Lucy.  _Oh, Lucy._

Moriarty turned and cast the halved coat into the pool.  The two pieces floated momentarily, drifting toward each other as if reaching out, trying to mend the tear.  Then the water lapped over them and sucked them into the deep. Moriarty turned back to Sherlock, clapping his hands as if to wipe off dust. 

“There’s that sorted,” he said.  “Now, back to our game.”

Sherlock lunged, blind with fury, heedless of the danger.  But Moriarty was quicker, and so was John.  The ensorcelled mazikeen stepped fluidly past Sherlock, seized his coat collar, and swept his legs out from under him with a strong kick.  Sherlock fell to his knees.  The kiss of the blade at his throat made him freeze.

“Bo-ring,” said Moriarty.  “My turn. Johnny-boy, cut off his index finger.”

John’s movements were swift and sure.  Before Sherlock had fully processed Moriarty’s command, he felt a knee dig into his back, forcing him onto his stomach.  John’s hand slipped from his collar down to his wrist and pinned it to the tiled floor.  The blade came down.

“Johnny-boy, stop,” said Moriarty, sounding bored.  “I changed my mind.”

The knife stopped a hairsbreadth from Sherlock’s finger.  A gasp of terror and relief wrenched out of Sherlock.  He twisted his neck to look up at John, hoping to find a scrap of recognition.  Nothing. The storm-blue eyes were dull, unseeing. 

“Give me a lock of his hair instead,” said Moriarty.  “I’d like to keep it.  A token from my sweet Sherlock.”

John’s hand moved to Sherlock’s head, fingers threading through the curls. In any other scenario, the touch might have been welcome.  A fond caress.  An indulgence.  But as the knife snicked past, shearing off a dark curl, Sherlock felt only sorrow. 

John held the hair aloft, motionless as Moriarty strode forward to retrieve it.  The fairy smiled as he tucked the lock into his breast pocket.  He patted the place above his heart with a gentle hand.  “Perfect.  Johnny-boy, flip him over, will you?  I’d like to see his face.  So much more _intimate.”_

John’s knee left the small of Sherlock’s back.  His hands were rough on Sherlock as he seized his shoulders, turned him, pressed him to the cold floor.  Straddled him in a cruel parody of an embrace.  Sherlock sucked in a breath as the mazikeen’s weight settled on his stomach.  His eyes roved over John’s blank face, down the column of his throat, down his torso.  Something snagged his attention— _there._ A small protrusion in the jacket pocket.  A weapon?

“What shall we play?” asked Moriarty.  He gave a dramatic gasp.  “I know! Let’s play with my new toy. Mother won’t mind, as long as I return it to her intact.”  He grinned. “Johnny-boy, hold down his wrists.”

Desperation broke through Sherlock’s dazed mind as John shifted, reaching for his arm.  Without thinking – without letting himself think – Sherlock surged forward, seizing the knife by the blade with one hand.  His other hand dove into John’s pocket and closed around something thin, metallic.  Pain bloomed as he pulled the knife aside and wrenched the object from John’s pocket.  Jackknifing his body, Sherlock clamped his knees around John’s torso and threw his weight to the side.  The world spun in a haze of momentum and pain, and after a frantic scramble, Sherlock found himself kneeling above John.  He released the knife and jumped to his feet, bolting toward Moriarty.  He drew back his arm and swung with all his might.

Moriarty staggered as the object struck his temple with bone-crunching force. A scream erupted from him as his skin boiled and sloughed back, scorched by the object’s touch.  He reeled, one hand flying up to summon a curse.

Sherlock wasted no time.  He swatted Moriarty’s hand aside and slammed the object into his jaw: half punch, half brand.  The stink of burning flesh filled his nostrils, mixing with the smell of chlorine. Iron.  Whatever John had hidden in his pocket was made of iron. 

“Sherlock!” John cried.  His voice was thick, as if he had just surfaced from the murk of a nightmare.  Sherlock twisted around to glance at John: conscious, awake.  Freed from Moriarty’s spell. 

His hesitation was a near-fatal mistake.  Still howling in pain, Moriarty raised his hand and bellowed a curse.  A blast knocked Sherlock off his feet and an invisible weight bore down upon him, flattening him to the floor.  He choked as the air rushed out of his lungs.  His ribs creaked, sparking bright starbursts of agony.  Moriarty was going to crush him.

John tore into his peripheral vision, racing toward Moriarty in a dark blur. The knife – still wet with Sherlock’s blood – came down in a vicious arc, slicing through the meat of Moriarty’s hand.  The fairy screamed as his palm opened, blood spurting.  The severed ends of his index and middle fingers fell to the floor in a spatter of crimson. 

Moriarty stumbled back and clutched his bleeding hand to his chest.  “You little _mongrel,”_ he hissed.  Hatred twisted the burned wreck of his face into a hideous mask.  “When Mother is done with you, I’ll—”

“Sherlock, _run!”_ John bellowed, heedless of the threat.  He closed in on Moriarty, slashing at the fairy.  But Moriarty was prepared; with a snarled curse, he tossed John aside like a rag doll.  John landed on the tile several feet away with a grunt, the knife clattering to the floor at his side. 

With his unharmed hand, Moriarty reached into the shadows and gripped them, drawing the darkness into substance.  He wound the shadows around his form like a cloak, leaving only his red, ruined face peering out as the edges of his shape began to dissolve.

“I promise,” said Moriarty, “I will make you _scream.”_

And then Moriarty vanished, the shadows swallowing him, leaving empty air in their wake.  John stood motionless for several seconds – and then his shoulders went slack, rising and falling in ragged breaths.  He turned. His expression was a wreck.

“Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock looked at John, unable to think, unable to resolve the facts that had just come to light.  His mind whirled in a tumult of confusion.  Moriarty had been looking for John.  Moriarty had wanted to take John away.

_Why?_

John stepped close and winced.  He lifted his hand to the juncture of his jaw and drew it away, palm tacky with drying blood.  Storm-blue eyes swept over Sherlock.  “Are you okay?”

Sherlock didn’t know what to say.  He raised his hand and looked at his improvised weapon – the object he’d had no time to consider, too consumed by the fight.  His mind, sluggish with incomprehension, was slow to process it. When he finally understood, a bolt of shock struck him to the core. 

A magnifying glass. _The_ magnifying glass, with the iron-wrought handle that had saved Sherlock from Eirene so many years ago.  As he stared at the dull handle, the chipped lens, the memories flooded back.  Someone seizing his hand, dragging him into the forest as Eirene screamed.  A push, sending him into the water.  The acrid sting of pond scum in his throat as he surfaced, gasping, back into the human world.

“How…”  His voice abandoned him.  He looked at John.

John’s returning gaze was steady and sad.  “Could I get that back?  It’s… it’s very important to me.  It’s my talisman.”

 

 


	4. Her whip of cricket's bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My version of fairies comes from Skye Alexander's "Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore," with a few bits here and there from Holly Black's work. 
> 
> This fic is on hiatus, but only in the sense that I have no set schedule for updates, as I am focusing on my own book right now. Thank you for reading and understanding. <3
> 
> I'm Zingiberis on Tumblr.
> 
> TW for mention of suicidal ideation.

They said nothing as they left the pool.

They said nothing as they stumbled out onto the pavement, half-leaning on one another for support.  It was all Sherlock could do to keep his eyes open as they walked, lest he lose his footing. 

Pain throbbed dully through Sherlock’s hand as he raised it to hail a cab: a distant drumbeat of screaming nerves and abused flesh. 

They said nothing as the cab ferried them back to Baker Street.

They said nothing as they climbed the stairs and stumbled into the flat.  John hit the light switch.  They stumbled across the sitting room and collapsed together on the sofa, accommodating each other without a thought for decorum. John lay on his back, head propped against the armrest with the fingers of one hand threading aimlessly through his hair.  Sherlock found himself sprawled on his front, on _John’s_ front, his stomach slotted over John’s hips and his knees a bony tangle with John’s calves.  His hands – bloodied and clean alike – rested under his chin, on John’s chest.

The sofa was not accustomed to two bodies, and certainly not two bodies in an inhuman jumble.  Soon, their position would become dreadfully uncomfortable.

Sherlock rested his cheek on John’s chest, listened to his heartbeat.  That steady, wild redcap heart. 

He listed for a few minutes, sleep held at bay by worry.  Moriarty was Fae.  Moriarty had slipped past Sherlock’s sight, passed himself off as an ordinary human. If Sherlock’s gift had holes in it, what else had slipped through? 

John shifted, and his hand dropped from his hair to sweep a path across his chest. His fingers brushed the edge of Sherlock’s wounded hand and Sherlock drew away with a pained hiss. 

John’s eyes flew open.  “What—” Understanding dawned and he sat up, extricating his legs from Sherlock’s.  “Shit, Sherlock, I’m so sorry…”

With a bit of fumbling, he disentangled himself from Sherlock and slid off the sofa, darting into the kitchen before Sherlock could voice his protest.  He returned moments later with a medical kit in one hand and a rubbish bin in the other. Bidding Sherlock sit up, he knelt beside the sofa.

“Let me see,” he said.

Sherlock hesitated, considering his bloody palm.  The bleeding had slowed to a trickle, but the pain was persistent – a hot, throbbing epicenter that radiated throughout his entire body. Warily, he offered John his hand.

“Hold still,” said John, wielding an alcohol swab.  His brow furrowed as he gripped Sherlock’s wrist and leaned forward and set to work.  Flames of agony licked up Sherlock’s arm, but he gritted his teeth and held firm, the fingers of his undamaged hand biting into the upholstery.  John was efficient, and after several seconds, he drew back and dropped the bloodied wad into the bin.  “I’m going to take a closer look.  Try not to move, yeah?  You’re doing very well.”

Sherlock pursed his lips around a retort.  _I’m not a child, John.  You don’t have to coddle me._ “Thank you.”

“Gosh.  Who knew all I had to do to make you behave was get ensorcelled?  If I’d known, I’d have done it ages ago.”

The joke fell flat, a balloon punctured before it could lift off the ground.  Sherlock glanced at John, and the mazikeen lowered his gaze.

“Sorry,” he said at length. 

Sherlock found his voice at last.  “It’s not a joke, John.”

“I know.”

“He tried to take you away.”

“I know.”

“John,” said Sherlock, “why did Moriarty want you?”

A muscle jumped in John’s jaw and he shook his head.  “I… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” 

John shook his head.  “I don’t. I have… I’ve got an inkling.  But I’m not certain.”

Sherlock waited, letting the silence stretch between them.  He knew that to speak would be to offer John a lifeline, an escape hatch out of the conversation.  He also knew that if John escaped, he might bolt the escape hatch shut behind him.  He might never entrust Sherlock with the truth.

John rubbed the nape of his neck.  “It’s… it’s got to do with my talisman.  The, um. The magnifying glass.”

_My magnifying glass.  The one that saved me from Eirene as a child._

“You were one of the Liminal Children,” Sherlock said.  Assumed.

John shook his head.  “No.” His thumb wandered, brushing the hinge of his jaw and smearing a clot of dried blood.  Sherlock stared at the ruddy smear as if spellbound.  “No, I wasn’t.  But I.  I was taken there, for a time.”

“You were taken to Faerie?”

John nodded, mouth set in a tight line.  Releasing Sherlock’s hand, he reached into the kit and pulled out a roll of gauze.  “Yes.”

Questions flooded Sherlock’s mind.  It was all he could do not to rattle off a dozen demands.  “When?”

“After…”  John trailed off, dragged in a slow, steadying breath.  Tore a length of gauze from the roll and began wrapping it around Sherlock’s hand.  “After I was shot.  In Afghanistan.”

“You came back to London shortly after you were discharged.  How could you…”  Sherlock trailed off, blinking as understanding dawned.  “Time dilation.”

Even as John nodded, expression remote, Sherlock cursed his stupidity. Time passed differently in Faerie – everyone knew that.  Taken by the Fair Folk, a man might pass a day in Faerie and return to find ten years passed in the human world.  The reverse was just as likely – John might have passed weeks, months, years in Faerie, and come back to find days gone in the human world.  The trade-off was arbitrary, as capricious as the Fair Folk themselves. 

“How long were you there?” Sherlock asked.

John’s eyes were downcast.  “You see, I don’t… I don’t remember.  Most of it. They took it away from me.”

Sherlock said nothing, suspended on an indrawn breath, as if the words had been stolen away as John’s time had been.  “Your memories.  They took your memories away?”

John sat back, closing the medical kit with a soft _click._   “Yeah. Bits and pieces, that’s all I’ve got. Shadows.”  A shadow darkened his expression, as if summoned by his words.  “That’s all.”

“Shadows,” Sherlock echoed.  “Like…?”

John sat back on his heels, hands fisted on his thighs.  His gaze turned inward, focused on a dark memory. Focused on shadows.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But—”

 _“Sherlock.”_   John’s voice was a plea.  “Please stop. I don’t want to talk about it. Not… not yet, anyway.”

Sherlock swallowed his protest and nodded.  “John.”

“Yes?”

“The magnifying glass.”

“Right.”  John’s left hand spasmed – whether from nerves or the urge to reach for the magnifying glass in his pocket, Sherlock couldn’t say.  “That.”

“Your talisman.”  _My talisman, once._

John was quiet for a long moment.  When at last he spoke, his voice was distant and wondering, as if steeped in a dream.  “I don’t remember much.  That’s true. But… I remember finding the magnifying glass.  We’d—… I had been walking through a wood.  The realm of the Tylwyth Teg.  I was searching for…”  Sorrow flickered through his eyes.  “A good tree. A strong branch, a place to stand. I’d stolen a rope.”  He looked at Sherlock, at once in the moment and trapped in a hopeless place in his past.  “I was done.”

            Sherlock’s disobedient hand moved, then, fingers uncurling from the knob of his knee to clasp John’s shoulder.  John’s head came up, and Sherlock’s hand moved of its own volition, tracking across paths of muscle and bone.  The clotted smear of blood at his jaw. 

“John,” he said.

John cleared his throat.  “I found an oak.  It had a low, thick branch, and I threw the rope over.  Then…”  The hopelessness in his eyes vanished, subsumed by a spark of something bright and lovely.  Something like _hope._   “I found the magnifying glass.  Stepped on it, really.  Almost broke the lens.”  His fingers curled, pantomiming a stroking motion.  “I don’t—don’t know why, exactly, but I.  I kept it.  I left the tree and returned to the hunting party.”

Sherlock’s mind worked like thieves’ hands, stealing the clues John dropped in his reverie, hoarding them like the precious gems they were.  _We,_ not _I.  A hunting party._   Pieces of a puzzle began to fall into place, filling gaps of a picture yet unseen. John had been taken to Faerie against his will, kept as a prisoner.

“I thought about throwing it away so many times,” said John, “but I… I never could.  I don’t know why.  But the longer I kept the magnifying glass, the more I felt… like myself, again. Like the ensorcellment was losing its grip.  I felt like I had been drowning, slowly, for so long.  And suddenly I could breathe again.”  He smiled.  “Sounds mad, doesn’t it?”

“No,” said Sherlock.  “It doesn’t. Not at all.”

John’s hand rose and covered Sherlock’s.  “I’d heard that objects can hold emotions.  Love, hate, grief.  It’s like a stain, or a scum of oil.  You can’t wash it off.”  His thumb brushed over Sherlock’s knuckles, absently.  “I believe it.  Whoever’d had that magnifying glass before had imbued it with so much _hope_ that I was… I was helpless to it.  Once I had that magnifying glass, I couldn’t stop thinking about my escape.”

A beat of silence.  Sherlock felt compelled to finish the story, dragged into it as if borne along a tide. “And then you did.  You escaped.”

“Yeah.”  John’s expression grew intent, eyes dark.  “I did.”

They were close, Sherlock realized.  So close.  If he leaned forward, just a few inches, he would be within reach of John’s breath. They could divide the air between them, slivering halves of lungfuls until they were both gasping. 

What had John endured that was so horrible he would seek out a rope, a strong branch?  Why had he been stolen away in the first place?  Why was Moriarty – and, by proxy, his enigmatic mother – so keen on recapturing him? 

Why did all of that take a backseat to one urge – the urge to tilt forward, to press and linger and steal slivers of breath? 

John drew back, his hand slipping away from Sherlock’s.  He cleared his throat.  “Well.  Your hand will be all right, I think – cut wasn’t too deep.  You got lucky, though.”  A brittle laugh.  “Try not to grab any more knives, yeah?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Right, then,” John said.  “Well. I’m knackered.  Think I’ll turn in.”

He stood and fled toward the stairwell.  Toward his lonely room, where the concentrated musk of him was ingrained in the sheets of his bed.  Sherlock remembered the scent, the furtive theft of it, and felt his blood warm.

“Wait,” said Sherlock.  He stood and went to John, pressing the magnifying glass into his inert fingers. “Don’t lose it.”

John stared at the object in his hands, mouth opening and closing.  He cleared his throat, blinked.  “Um.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

John shifted on the balls of his feet, fingers curling and uncurling around the brass handle of the magnifying glass.  “Well.  Good night.” Then he was gone, darting up the stairs. Sherlock was alone. 

He stood, dizzy with a muddle of confusion and exhaustion and heady, scorching _want._   He stumbled into his room, collapsed on the bed.  Fell into slumber in the space of a heartbeat. 

 

-

 

The next day, Sherlock bought a train ticket to Inverness.

“Scotland?” John asked, bemused.  “What, have you got a case there?”

“No,” said Sherlock.  “I just fancy a breath of fresh air.”

John narrowed his eyes.  “You’re hiding something.”

“Perhaps.”

“Let me see if I can get time off from the clinic.”  John’s brow furrowed as his gaze grew distant, mentally tallying. “Sarah won’t be keen, but—”

Sherlock completed the purchase – one ticket.  “I’m afraid I’ll be going alone.”

A beat of silence.  Then, “Oh. Well, that’s all right, then.  No need for me to take time off.”

“Hmm, no.  It’s necessary that I go alone.”

John crossed the room and sat in his armchair with a heavy _whump_ and a sigh.  “Have fun in the Highlands.  If you take it into your head to wear a kilt, please get photographic evidence.”

Sherlock twisted in his chair, frowning at the mazikeen.  “And give you and Lestrade ammunition to humiliate me? I think not.”

“Not ammunition,” said John.  “And not for Lestrade.  Just for me.”

Sherlock stared, and stared, and stared, but John only picked up the newspaper from the arm of his chair and flicked it open, eyes scanning the headlines. “Liverpool’s playing Manchester on Wednesday.  I should ask Greg if he wants to go for a pint.”

Sherlock was not listening.  The record player of his brain had been broken, the needle juddering on a loop of _just for me, just for me, just for me._

 

-

 

It truly was important that Sherlock go alone.  Such charms were most powerful when every rule was followed to the letter.  The farthest tree had to be found.  The maker of the charm had to collect the berries himself, dry them, twine them. It was somewhat like a chemical reaction, where precise parameters had to be followed with a delicate touch. Heat the solution too quickly, and it chars.  Let your hand shake, and a droplet of sulfuric acid chews into the benchtop. 

But this experiment was more delicate still.  In order for the charm to work – and to work _well_ – Sherlock had to infuse it with emotion.  With _sentiment._

Days ago, Sherlock would have scoffed at the notion.  Now, remembering John’s vacant stare, the point of the blade digging into his throat…

Peeling off his gloves, Sherlock reached for the low branches of the tree. He plucked each berry with infinite care, wary of bruising the tender, red flesh.  When he was done collecting, he turned to leave the grove, only to stop as his eyes fell to the leaf litter beneath his feet.  The red pulp of fallen berries gleamed like rubies.  Like droplets of blood.

 

-

 

Two weeks later, Sherlock presented John with a necklace. 

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Rowan berries.”  Sherlock feathered one fingertip across the dried husks.  Seven berries, perfectly ripe when picked, scored through with a length of twine.  Their skins were withered and wrinkled now, but he could feel the charm humming through the twine like a vibration on a plucked harpstring. 

“What’s so special about rowan berries?”

“They’re charmed,” explained Sherlock.  “No fairy can ensorcell you while you wear this necklace.”

John’s eyes widened for an instant, shock wiping away confusion.  “Oh.”

A frisson of uncertainty coursed through Sherlock.  Perhaps he had overstepped.  Perhaps John did not like the reminder of his weakness, of how easily Moriarty had manipulated him. 

Perhaps – and this thought made Sherlock’s throat clot – John knew of how such charms were made.  How silly notions like _caring_ fed into them, made them as strong as steel. 

Sherlock pulled his hand back, an excuse burning at the back of his throat. But John was quicker.  His hands darted out, seizing Sherlock’s in one and the necklace in the other.  Sherlock froze, and John lifted the necklace of rowan berries, fingertips skirting along the puckered line on his palm.  The bandages had come off days ago, and while John declared the cut to be “healing well,” Sherlock suspected he would carry this scar for the rest of his life. Fairies were uncompromising like that.

“Thank you,” said John.  He held the charm like the priceless gift it was, but his eyes were fixed on Sherlock’s. “I mean it, Sherlock.  Thank you.”

 

 

-

 

Things changed after that.

Or, rather, things continued.  At some point Sherlock could not identify, a natural progression had begun, like the thaw of deep winter into spring.  The first warm patches of sunlight, the first green shoots burgeoning from the snow. Perhaps, like the seasons, it had always been destined to happen.  But when Sherlock gave John the rowan berry charm, the change became more pronounced.

John became more tactile.  More _affectionate._   They were small gestures:  a hand brushing over his shoulder in greeting or parting, bumping feet under the table – accidental or deliberate, Sherlock could never guess – and once, memorably, a ruffle of Sherlock’s curls to soothe a moment of pique.  Sherlock had sat at the kitchen table, microscope before him, stone-still as John collected his tea and toast and moved to the sitting room.

He put the sensation of John’s fingers on his scalp in the Mind Palace box with all the other little details.  The box he often contemplated binning, though he always found an excuse to keep it around. It had grown bigger, edging irrelevant facts out of the Mind Palace to make space for itself: the Queen of England, the Prime Minister. 

John wore the necklace whenever he went out, concealed under layers of jumpers and coats, unnoticeable unless you were looking for it.  Sherlock was always looking.

Until, abruptly, he wasn’t.  John went away for a few weeks; probably he had said mentioned it, but Sherlock hadn’t been listening.  He might have been more concerned if Lestrade hadn’t come along with a locked-room murder, a seven – a _seven_ – and diverted him for a time. 

He was brilliant, as usual, but something was not quite right.  At his final deduction, he looked to his side, expectant. 

And found John missing.

John returned, eventually.  Sherlock silently vowed to keep him close, bring him on as many cases as possible. He was becoming quite adept at monopolizing John’s time.  Surely a little extra effort would drive off the remaining vultures.

Much to his delight, that effort proved a moot point.  One evening, as they sat watching telly – some reality show, tedious save for the spades of recessive traits in the family – John said, “Sarah and I broke up.”

Widow’s peaks and jutting underbites took a backseat to this information.  “Oh?”

“Yeah.”  John shifted on the sofa, his thigh brushing against the line of Sherlock’s: a masterclass in inadvertent touch.  “We, um. Well, it just.  It wasn’t working.”  A smile without mirth.  “I don’t think my life is… compatible, right now.  With relationships.”

Sherlock’s stomach twisted into knots.  “I see.”

“Hmm.”  John nudged Sherlock’s arm with his elbow.  “Yeah.  Not many people willing to be kidnapped by Chinese fairy circuses.”

“Crying shame, that,” said Sherlock.  “I find the Fair Folk very diverting.”

John snorted.  “You would.”

His foot, sock-clad and vulnerable, tilted on his heel, toes brushing Sherlock’s. The contact sent a jolt up Sherlock’s leg.  “Well. If you’ve got any cases on, let me know. I’ve got nothing on for the foreseeable future.” 

“Of course,” said Sherlock, and it was only with a little mortification that he heard his voice rasp.  He cleared his throat and stood, tearing himself away from that tantalizing contact. “Put on one of those ridiculous spy films.”

“What?”  John blinked. “Sherlock?”

“Won’t be a moment,” said Sherlock, and fled to the kitchen.

He lingered far longer than necessary, alone with his thoughts.  John and Sarah were through.  John and _relationships_ – _relationships with_ _women_ – were through, if Sherlock had read John’s implication correctly. 

His fingers wrapped around the refrigerator handle, knuckles white. _What if I’ve got it wrong?_

Swallowing his fear, Sherlock tugged open the refrigerator door and bent to the case on the bottom drawer, beside the feet.  An IPA with a ridiculous name about trout.  Sherlock couldn’t remember why he’d taken it into his head to buy the beer, but buy it he had.  He paused with the first two bottles in hand.  Was this going too far? 

“For God’s sake,” he muttered to himself.  He slammed the door shut and stalked back into the sitting room. 

Still seated on the sofa, John looked at him curiously.  “What’ve you got there, then?”

Sherlock brandished the bottles.  Felt his throat tighten.  “Um.  Libations.”

John stared at him like he had grown a second head.  Chewing on his lip, Sherlock clarified, “Alcohol.”

“No, I… I gathered that much,” said John.  A smile twitched at one corner of his mouth.

Sherlock’s hackles rose.  “Then why…”

“Never you mind,” said John.  He patted the place on the sofa beside him.  “Come on, then.  Let’s watch Daniel Craig shoot villains and look impossibly cool doing it.”

Sherlock sat, handed John a bottle, and proceeded to make the appropriate disgruntled sounds as the drivel that was James Bond played on the telly.  In truth, he wasn’t absorbing a single second of it.  His attention was elsewhere.

Elsewhere being, of course, the unclaimed sofa space between himself and John.  The gap between their fingers; the cold pocket between the warmth of their bodies.

 

-

 

When John offered to help with Sherlock’s cases, he probably didn’t anticipate traipsing off to the arse-end of Norfolk with a laptop in hand. 

Or perhaps he did.  He was so fond of calling Sherlock a madman, after all.  That did not mean he was keen on the idea.

“It’ll take me half a day to get there!” John protested. 

“Which is why this argument is counterintuitive to our purposes,” Sherlock replied.  “The more time we spend bickering, the more time those morons that pass for police officers have to compromise the evidence.  I need to see the body and the site before that happens.”

“Why don’t you go?” John asked.

“This case is a _six,_ John.  I won’t go out for anything less than a seven.”

“Spoiled ponce, you are,” John muttered.  “What, have you got some other pressing business to attend to?”

“Not really,” said Sherlock.  He picked at a spot of lint on his threadbare sweatpants.  All at once, his clothes seemed to chafe.  “If nothing better comes along, I’ll probably stay here. Just as well.”  He sighed.  “Clothes are _boring_ today.”

John looked at him for a long, long moment.  Then he went to pack a bag.

 

-

 

 

As fortune would have it, a better case _did_ come along.  As misfortune would have it, John was long gone by that point, disembarking at Norfolk Wildlife Trust station and getting into a cab bound for the marshes. 

No matter.  Sherlock could solve two cases at once, providing the WiFi on Lestrade’s scene was decent.  The real inconvenience would be changing into proper clothes. 

(Sherlock did momentarily consider going to the scene draped in the bedsheet, but reason won out in the end.  Best not give Donovan and Anderson another reason to call him a freak.)

Half an hour later, he strode onto the crime scene – murder in Clerkenwell, delightfully gruesome business.  The body was in bloodless pieces all over the flat, including various stations in the kitchen.  Tugging open a drawer to find an exsanguinated hand amidst the cutlery, Sherlock could not suppress a grin. 

“Oi!” a voice snapped.  “Get out of there!  You’ll muck up the evidence.” 

Sherlock startled – not because he had been caught, but because he knew the voice. He whirled around and found himself staring down at Harriet Watson, all kitted up in the blue forensics uniform. 

“Harry,” he said.

Her red-rimmed eyes widened as recognition dawned.  “Oh, shit.”

Sherlock’s first impulse was to demand what she was doing here, at a crime scene, but he caught himself.  The uniform made it quite plain.  “You work in forensics.”

To Harry’s credit, she rallied quickly.  “Yes.  Obviously.”

“You’re new to the Met,” said Sherlock, suddenly determined to throw her off her guard.  “Moved to London after your divorce went through.  Second… no, third crime scene.  You’re keen on being head of forensics – bold for a new recruit, but not impossible for you. You’re clearly competent, even if you are an alcoholic.”

“Shut up!” Harry hissed.  She darted a glance over her shoulder, as if expecting Lestrade to materialize at the worst possible moment.  Turning back to Sherlock, she glowered.  “Christ, John told me you were a cock, but I didn’t realize…” 

Sherlock was stung.  “Last we met, you said John liked me.”

“Ye-es,” said Harry, drawing out the word like he was a simpleton.  “But John can be a right prick himself, so that’s not exactly a shining endorsement.”

Sherlock was about to snipe back when Lestrade’s voice came ringing down the hall, preceding him into the kitchen.  “Any luck?”

“There’s a hand in that drawer,” said Harry.  “Mr. Holmes was about to compromise it with his prints and DNA.”

“As long as he’s not making off with any body parts, he’s all right,” said Lestrade.  He walked through the doorway and stopped, hands on his hips.  He glanced between Sherlock and Harry with a wincing smile. “Well, might as well introduce you. Sherlock, this is—”

“We’ve met,” Sherlock interjected.  “Harry is—”

“Friend of a friend,” Harry said quickly.  She held up her ID card, emblazoned with her photograph, the title “Crime Scene Investigator,” and below that, the name _Harry Edwards._ Sherlock glanced at her, puzzled, but she offered no explanation.  “And I’ve read that, er, blog.  By the doctor.”

“That’s John,” said Lestrade.  “He’s usually around.  Come to think of it, where is John?”

“Norfolk,” said Sherlock, faintly.  “Investigating on my behalf.”

“Huh.  Well, s’pose that’s why you’ve got a partner now,” said Lestrade.  “Divvy up the work.”  He nodded to the surrounding kitchen.  “D’you need more time on the scene?  We’re about to take some specimens back to the lab, but if you’ve got an idea…”

“Not yet, no,” said Sherlock.  He’d been too preoccupied by Harry to make any deductions.  “I need more time.”

Lestrade smirked.  “Never thought I’d hear you say that.  Right, well, we’ve got time.  I’ll leave you to it.  Harry, could you collect the hand and… anything else that might show up.”

“Yes, of course,” said Harry.

“Great,” said Lestrade.  He turned and vanished back down the hall.

He was scarcely out of earshot when Sherlock rounded on Harry.  _“Edwards?”_

“Drop it,” Harry snapped.

“But why—”

“Piss.  Off.” Harry stormed past him, pulling an evidence bag from her pocket as she went.  She removed the hand from the drawer with great care, deposited it in the bag, and stalked out of the kitchen before Sherlock could protest. 

With little else to do, Sherlock made quick work of the kitchen and concluded that there was nothing to be found.  The killer might have strewn their victim’s corpse all over the flat in a fit of morbid whimsy, but they had been otherwise scrupulously clean.  He followed Harry to the sitting room, where the officers and forensics had assembled around a limbless torso.  As he drew near, he saw Anderson and Donovan glance at him before exchanging a disparaging look.  Anderson’s lips moved, framing a whisper; Donovan snickered. 

“So,” said Lestrade, “we’ve identified the victim as Mr. Nicholas Clarke. Thirty-five years old.  Worked as a barrister, had a wife and three-year-old son.”

“Jesus,” Donovan muttered.

“Any obvious enemies?” asked Anderson.

“Potentially a lot,” sighed Lestrade.  “He was representing an advocacy group for the Fair Folk. Pushing for less strict measures on the visas, et cetera.  Rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”

Anderson, of course, seized upon the lowest hanging fruit.  “Maybe a Fae killed him.  Maybe they didn’t want change, so they silenced him.  This is all pretty weird, innit?  All the blood drained out?  Could be a redcap.”

“There hasn’t been a redcap in England in over two-hundred years,” said Harry. “And they aren’t exactly subtle creatures.  If one was wandering around London, it would have been reported.”

Anderson narrowed his eyes at Harry, but he held his tongue.  Lestrade nodded, taking her point.  “Yeah, I doubt it’s a redcap.  Frankly, I doubt that it’s Fae at all.”

“Maybe someone working in healthcare?” suggested Donovan.  “Or food processing?  Someone with the equipment to exsanguinate.”

Harry nodded and began to speak, but Anderson cut her off.  “What about other kinds of Fae?  Spriggan?  Goblin?”

“Same as the redcap,” Harry said tartly.  “Haven’t been in the country in centuries.”

Anderson waved off her words and smiled at her in a pitying sort of way. “Well, _yes,_ that’s strictly true if you don’t consider illegal immigrant Fair Folk.  But one could have—”

“If one had snuck in,” said Harry, each word ploddingly slow, “it would have been seen and reported.  If not by a human, then by the Fair Folk with visas.  That lot can be just as dangerous to them as to us.”  She pinned Anderson with a hard look.  “Have you got any _useful_ theories?”

Anderson fell silent, flushed with fury.  Donovan averted her eyes and bit the inside of one cheek.  Sherlock felt a sudden surge of affection for Harry. 

“Anyway,” said Lestrade, unruffled, “we’ll move all the evidence to the lab. Donovan, you’ll follow up with the neighbors.  See if they noticed anything amiss.  Edwards, you’re with me.  We have to get the body parts to the lab so Molly can take a closer look.”

The group disbanded, each off to their own task.  As Sherlock strayed toward the kitchen, contemplating a final look, he found Anderson and Donovan standing in an alcove of the sitting room, heads bent and voices hushed.

“…wants the director job, I’m sure of it.  That’s _my_ job,” Anderson muttered.

“You won’t get it waving those wild theories about,” Donovan chided.  “Just because you’re trying to impress—”

“I’m not,” Anderson cut in hastily.  “Anyway, s’not like Edwards is an expert on the Fair Folk.  Just because she’s a mongrel…”

At that moment, Sherlock became aware of two things:  that Donovan had spotted him, and that Harry Watson – Harry Edwards – was standing a pace behind him.  He hadn’t heard her approach, and seeing her now, he knew why.  Harry was utterly still, eyes glittering with predatory intent.  She was _other,_ apart.  A prowling creature.

Anderson caught on, far too late, and mumbled a vague non-excuse to cover his retreat.  Donovan was left standing in the alcove.  She darted a glance past Harry, as if contemplating flight.  Then she set her jaw and looked Harry in the eye.

“Sorry,” she said.  “He can be a right twat.”

“Unfortunate phrasing, given your arrangement with him,” said Sherlock.

Donovan glared at him, but before she could reply, Harry said, “Shut it, Sherlock.”  She turned her gaze on Donovan.  “If I hear him calling me a mongrel again, I’ll kick his teeth in.  You can tell him that.”

Donovan nodded warily and skirted past, her eyes lingering on Harry with something between pity and fear.  Once she was out of earshot, Sherlock looked to Harry.  “I was only trying to help.”

“I can handle myself,” said Harry, with a conviction that suggested she had spent her life doing just that. “Anyway, I’m used to it.  Can’t be gay _and_ a mazikeen.  People just can’t compute.”

“How did they know?”

Harry lifted her ID card and flipped it over, displaying an insignia printed onto the plastic: a simple graphic of dragonfly wings.  Sherlock studied the insignia, apprehensive.  Fair Folk and mazikeen were required to declare their species on official government documents – licenses, passports, visas – but the same could not be said for businesses.  He looked at Harry.  Her set jaw and intent stare told him all he needed to know.

“This was voluntary,” he said.

“Yes,” said Harry.  “John can hide all he wants.  Not me.”

“That’s why you use the name ‘Edwards.’”

“Yeah.  Mum’s maiden name.”  She shrugged. “I’m not shy about my ancestry, but if I wind up the wrong people, John could lose his job.  Ordinary people are afraid of people like me.  They’re always looking for a way to push us out.  So.”  She fiddled idly with her ID card.  “I’m Harry Edwards now.”

 

-

 

Sherlock had just got back to Baker Street and out of his tiresome clothes when Mycroft’s goons came by to collect him.  This time, he opted for the bedsheet.

He was taken to Buckingham Palace.  John arrived in short order, back from Norfolk by way of helicopter.  Standing in the doorway, he lifted his hands in a gesture that perfectly encapsulated:  _What the hell?_

He sat beside Sherlock on the sofa and they chatted about pants and the lack thereof.  Burst into giggles like a pair of schoolboys.  John’s hand stole to a trailing fold of the sheet, worrying the white fabric between thumb and forefinger.  Sherlock’s laughter ceased.

“Ridiculous,” John said, chuckling.

Mycroft, being Mycroft, had to swan in at that very moment.  He and his irrelevant friend nattered on about some royal or another having it off with a dominatrix.  Dull, but it was a case Sherlock and John could do together.  And the prospect of Mycroft owing him a favor was certainly tantalizing.

They went to the flat in Belgravia to pay the dominatrix – _Irene Adler_ – a call.  As a part of his disguise, Sherlock needed to look roughed up.  It seemed perfectly sensible to have John do the honors, but John refused.

“I’m not punching you in the face,” he said.  “No matter how much subtext I hear.”

Sherlock needed to nettle him.  “I saw Harry again today,” he tried.

John grew instantly tense.  A cutting smile stretched across his face.  “What?”

“She works for the Met.  I hadn’t deduced that she’s in forensics, though in my defense, I was preoccupied with the vomiting.”

John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fuck’s sake.”

“She’s quite sharp, your sister.  And practically functional, if you ignore the drinking.”

John grunted.  Anger suffused his frame like an electric current humming through a wire stripped to the core: a single brush could shock and sear. 

“Punch me in the face,” said Sherlock.

“Oh, for— _no,_ I’m not punching you in the fucking face, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s last recourse was to punch John.  John was much more amenable after that.

 

-

 

Seated on the sofa in Irene Adler’s flat, Sherlock fidgeted with his vicar’s collar.  God, but the thing was strangling him.  While part of his mind was entertained by the case, another part simply wanted to go back to Baker Street and strip off the cumbersome trappings of decency.  He wanted to be naked.  He wanted to see if John could be coaxed into fiddling with the sheet again. 

A voice rang through the flat, light and airy, cut-glass clear.  “Sorry to hear you’ve been hurt.  I don’t think Kate caught your name.”

Irene Adler sauntered into the room, clad in nothing but heels and a blood-red slash of lipstick.  Her smile was as sharp as the honed edge of a blade. 

“You,” he said.  He could think of nothing else to say.

Irene – _Eirene_ , the fairy from the wood, his vicious would-be mother – smiled.  “Hello, sweetling.”

 

 


End file.
